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arXiv:1609.07502 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Nodal-line entanglement entropy: Generalized Widom formula from entanglement Hamiltonians

Michael Pretko

Published Jun 7, 2017• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A system of fermions forming a Fermi surface exhibits a large degree of quantum entanglement, even in the absence of interactions. In particular, the usual case of a codimension one Fermi surface leads to a logarithmic violation of the area law for entanglement entropy as dictated by the Widom formula. We here generalize this formula to the case of arbitrary codimension, which is of particular interest for nodal lines in three dimensions. We first re-derive the standard Widom formula by calculating an entanglement Hamiltonian for Fermi-surface systems, obtained by repurposing a trick commonly applied to relativistic theories. The entanglement Hamiltonian will take a local form in terms of a low-energy patch theory for the Fermi surface, although it is nonlocal with respect to the microscopic fermions. This entanglement Hamiltonian can then be used to derive the entanglement entropy, yielding a result in agreement with the Widom formula. The method is then generalized to arbitrary codimension. For nodal lines, the area law is obeyed, and the magnitude of the coefficient for a particular partition is nonuniversal. However, the coefficient has a universal dependence on the shape and orientation of the nodal line relative to the partitioning surface. By comparing the relative magnitude of the area law for different partitioning cuts, entanglement entropy can be used as a tool for diagnosing the presence and shape of a nodal line in a ground-state wave function.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.95.235111

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A system of fermions forming a Fermi surface exhibits a large degree of quantum entanglement, even in the absence of interactions. In particular, the usual case of a codimension one Fermi surface leads to a logarithmic violation of the area law for entanglement entropy as dictated by the Widom formula. We here generalize this formula to the case of arbitrary codimension, which is of particular interest for nodal lines in three dimensions. We first re-derive the standard Widom formula by calculating an entanglement Hamiltonian for Fermi-surface systems, obtained by repurposing a trick commonly applied to relativistic theories. The entanglement Hamiltonian will take a local form in terms of a low-energy patch theory for the Fermi surface, although it is nonlocal with respect to the microscopic fermions. This entanglement Hamiltonian can then be used to derive the entanglement entropy, yielding a result in agreement with the Widom formula. The method is then generalized to arbitrary codimension. For nodal lines, the area law is obeyed, and the magnitude of the coefficient for a particular partition is nonuniversal. However, the coefficient has a universal dependence on the shape and orientation of the nodal line relative to the partitioning surface. By comparing the relative magnitude of the area law for different partitioning cuts, entanglement entropy can be used as a tool for diagnosing the presence and shape of a nodal line in a ground-state wave function.
A codimension-one critical surface in momentum space can be either a familiar Fermi surface, which separates occupied states from empty ones in the noninteracting fermion case, or a novel Bose surface, where gapless bosonic excitations are anchored. The presence of such surfaces gives rise to logarithmic violation of entanglement entropy area law. When they are convex, we show that the shape of these critical surfaces can be determined by inspecting the leading logarithmic term of real-space entanglement entropy. The fundamental difference between a Fermi surface and a Bose surface is revealed by the fact that the logarithmic terms in entanglement entropies differ by a factor of 2: SlogBose=2SlogFermi{S}_{\mathrm{log}}^{\mathrm{Bose}}=2{S}_{\mathrm{log}}^{\mathrm{Fermi}}SlogBose​=2SlogFermi​, even when they have identical geometry. Our method has remarkable similarity with determining Fermi surface shape using quantum oscillation. We also discuss possible probes of concave critical surfaces in momentum space.
Abstract The entanglement entropy of free fermions with a Fermi surface is known to obey a logarithmic scaling and violate the area law in all dimensions. Here, we would like to see how temperature affects the logarithmic scaling behavior. To this end, we compute the entanglement negativity of free fermions using the fermionic partial transpose developed in our earlier paper (Shapourian et al 2017 Phys. Rev . B 95 165101). In one dimension, we analytically derive the leading order term in the finite-temperature entanglement negativity and show how the entanglement negativity indicates a crossover from a quantum entangled state to a classical thermal state, where the entanglement is completely lost. We explain how the one-dimensional result can be generalized to codimension-one Fermi surface of arbitrary shape in higher dimensions. In both one and two dimensions, we check that our analytical results agree with the numerical simulation of free fermions on a lattice.
Abstract We study the asymptotic growth of the entanglement entropy of ground states of non-interacting (spinless) fermions in R3{{\mathbb {R}}}^3R3 R 3 subject to a constant magnetic field perpendicular to a plane. As for the case with no magnetic field we find, to leading order L2ln⁡(L)L^2\ln (L)L2ln(L) L 2 ln ( L ) , a logarithmically enhanced area law of this entropy for a bounded, piecewise Lipschitz region LΛ⊂R3L\Lambda \subset {{\mathbb {R}}}^3LΛ⊂R3 L Λ ⊂ R 3 as the scaling parameter L tends to infinity. This is in contrast to the two-dimensional case since particles can now move freely in the direction of the magnetic field, which causes the extra ln⁡(L)\ln (L)ln(L) ln ( L ) factor. The explicit expression for the coefficient of the leading order contains a surface integral similar to the Widom–Sobolev formula in the non-magnetic case. It differs, however, in the sense that the dependence on the boundary, ∂Λ\partial \Lambda ∂Λ ∂ Λ , is not solely on its area but on the “surface perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field”. We utilize a two-term asymptotic expansion by Widom (up to an error term of order one) of certain traces of one-dimensional Wiener–Hopf operators with a discontinuous symbol. This leads to an improved error term of the order L2L^2L2 L 2 of the relevant trace for piecewise C1,α\textsf{C}^{1,\alpha }C1,α C 1 , α smooth surfaces ∂Λ\partial \Lambda ∂Λ ∂ Λ .
Quantum phases characterized by surfaces of gapless excitations are known to violate the otherwise ubiquitous boundary law of entanglement entropy in the form of a multiplicative log correction: $S\ensuremath{\sim}{L}^{d\ensuremath{-}1}logL$. Using variational Monte Carlo, we calculate the second R\'enyi entropy for a model wave function of the $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ composite Fermi liquid (CFL) state defined on the two-dimensional triangular lattice. By carefully studying the scaling of the total R\'enyi entropy and, crucially, its contributions from the modulus and sign of the wave function on various finite-size geometries, we argue that the prefactor of the leading LlogLL\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}logLLlogL term is equivalent to that in the analogous free fermion wave function. In contrast to the recent results of Shao et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 206402 (2015)], we thus conclude that the ``Widom formula'' holds even in this non-Fermi liquid CFL state. More generally, our results further elucidate---and place on a more quantitative footing---the relationship between nontrivial wave function sign structure and $S\ensuremath{\sim}L\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}logL$ entanglement scaling in such highly entangled gapless phases.
The entanglement entropy of a noninteracting fermionic system confined to a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice on a torus is calculated. We find that the entanglement entropy can characterize Lifshitz phase transitions without a local order parameter. In the noncritical phase and critical phase with a nodal Fermi surface, the entanglement entropy satisfies an area law. The leading subarea term is a constant in the gapped phase rather than a logarithmic additive term in the gapless regime. The tuning of chemical potential allows for a nonzero Fermi surface, whose variation along a particular direction determines a logarithmic violation of the area law. We perform the scaling of entanglement entropy numerically and find agreement between the analytic and numerical results. Furthermore, we clearly show that an entanglement spectrum is equivalent to an edge spectrum.
We study bipartite entanglement entropies in the ground and excited states of free-fermion models, where a staggered potential, μs, induces a gap in the spectrum. Ground-state entanglement entropies satisfy the "area law", and the "area-law" coefficient is found to diverge as a logarithm of the staggered potential, when the system has an extended Fermi surface at μs=0. On the square lattice, we show that the coefficient of the logarithmic divergence depends on the Fermi surface geometry and its orientation with respect to the real-space interface between subsystems and is related to the Widom conjecture as enunciated by Gioev and Klich [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 100503 (2006)]. For point Fermi surfaces in two-dimension, the "area-law" coefficient stays finite as μs→0. The von Neumann entanglement entropy associated with the excited states follows a "volume law" and allows us to calculate an entropy density function sV(e), which is substantially different from the thermodynamic entropy density function sT(e), when the lattice is bipartitioned into two equal subsystems but approaches the thermodynamic entropy density as the fraction of sites in the larger subsystem, that is integrated out, approaches unity.