We consider a lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) modular Hamiltonian as an ansatz for the bipartite entanglement Hamiltonian of the quantum critical chains. Using numerically unbiased methods, we check the accuracy of the BW ansatz by both comparing the BW R\'enyi entropy to the exact results and investigating the size scaling of the norm distance between the exact reduced density matrix and the BW one. Our study encompasses a variety of models, scanning different universality classes, including integrable models such as the transverse field Ising, three-state Potts and XXZ chains, and the nonintegrable bilinear-biquadratic model. We show that the R\'enyi entropies obtained via the BW ansatz properly describe the scaling properties predicted by conformal field theory. Remarkably, the BW R\'enyi entropies also faithfully capture the corrections to the conformal field theory scaling associated with the energy density operator. In addition, we show that the norm distance between the discretized BW density matrix and the exact one asymptotically goes to zero with the system size: this indicates that the BW ansatz also can be employed to predict properties of the eigenvectors of the reduced density matrices and is thus potentially applicable to other entanglement-related quantities such as negativity.
We consider a lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) modular Hamiltonian as an ansatz for the bipartite entanglement Hamiltonian of the quantum critical chains. Using numerically unbiased methods, we check the accuracy of the BW ansatz by both comparing the BW R'enyi entropy to the exact results and investigating the size scaling of the norm distance between the exact reduced density matrix and the BW one. Our study encompasses a variety of models, scanning different universality classes, including integrable models such as the transverse field Ising, three-state Potts and XXZ chains, and the nonintegrable bilinear-biquadratic model. We show that the R'enyi entropies obtained via the BW ansatz properly describe the scaling properties predicted by conformal field theory. Remarkably, the BW R'enyi entropies also faithfully capture the corrections to the conformal field theory scaling associated with the energy density operator. In addition, we show that the norm distance between the discretized BW density matrix and the exact one asymptotically goes to zero with the system size: this indicates that the BW ansatz also can be employed to predict properties of the eigenvectors of the reduced density matrices and is thus potentially applicable to other entanglement-related quantities such as negativity.
We carry out a comprehensive comparison between the exact modular Hamiltonian and the lattice version of the Bisognano-Wichmann (BW) one in one-dimensional critical quantum spin chains. As a warm-up, we first illustrate how the trace distance provides a more informative mean of comparison between reduced density matrices when compared to any other Schatten n n -distance, normalized or not. In particular, as noticed in earlier works, it provides a way to bound other correlation functions in a precise manner, i.e., providing both lower and upper bounds. Additionally, we show that two close reduced density matrices, i.e. with zero trace distance for large sizes, can have very different modular Hamiltonians. This means that, in terms of describing how two states are close to each other, it is more informative to compare their reduced density matrices rather than the corresponding modular Hamiltonians. After setting this framework, we consider the ground states for infinite and periodic XX spin chain and critical Ising chain. We provide robust numerical evidence that the trace distance between the lattice BW reduced density matrix and the exact one goes to zero as \ell^{-2} ℓ − 2 for large length of the interval \ell ℓ . This provides strong constraints on the difference between the corresponding entanglement entropies and correlation functions. Our results indicate that discretized BW reduced density matrices reproduce exact entanglement entropies and correlation functions of local operators in the limit of large subsystem sizes. Finally, we show that the BW reduced density matrices fall short of reproducing the exact behavior of the logarithmic emptiness formation probability in the ground state of the XX spin chain.
The modular (or entanglement) Hamiltonian correspondent to the half-space bipartition of a quantum state uniquely characterizes its entanglement properties. However, in the context of lattice models, its explicit form is analytically known only for the two spin chains and certain free theories in one dimension. In this work, we provide a thorough investigation of entanglement Hamiltonians in lattice models obtained via the Bisognano-Wichmann theorem, which provides an explicit functional form for the entanglement Hamiltonian itself in quantum field theory. Our study encompasses a variety of one- and two-dimensional models, supporting diverse quantum phases and critical points, and, most importantly, scanning several universality classes, including Ising, Potts, and Luttinger liquids. We carry out extensive numerical simulations based on the density matrix renormalization group method, exact diagonalization, and quantum Monte Carlo. In particular, we compare the exact entanglement properties and correlation functions to those obtained applying the Bisognano-Wichmann theorem on the lattice. We carry out this comparison on both the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the entanglement Hamiltonian, and expectation values of correlation functions and order parameters. Our results evidence that as long as the low-energy description of the lattice model is well captured by a Lorentz-invariant quantum field theory, the Bisognano-Wichmann theorem provides a qualitatively and quantitatively accurate description of the lattice entanglement Hamiltonian. The resulting framework paves the way to direct studies of entanglement properties utilizing well-established statistical mechanics methods and experiments.
Using the density matrix renormalization group, we calculated the finite-size corrections of the entanglement $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-R\'enyi entropy of a single interval for several critical quantum chains. We considered models with U(1) symmetry such as the spin-1/2 XXZ and spin-1 Fateev-Zamolodchikov models, as well as models with discrete symmetries such as the Ising, the Blume-Capel, and the three-state Potts models. These corrections contain physically relevant information. Their amplitudes, which depend on the value of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, are related to the dimensions of operators in the conformal field theory governing the long-distance correlations of the critical quantum chains. The obtained results together with earlier exact and numerical ones allow us to formulate some general conjectures about the operator responsible for the leading finite-size correction of the $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-R\'enyi entropies. We conjecture that the exponent of the leading finite-size correction of the $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-R\'enyi entropies is ${p}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}=2{X}_{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}/\ensuremath{\alpha}$ for $\ensuremath{\alpha}>1$ and ${p}_{1}=\ensuremath{\nu}$, where ${X}_{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}$ denotes the dimensions of the energy operator of the model and $\ensuremath{\nu}=2$ for all the models.
As a powerful theoretical construct, the entanglement Hamiltonian (EH) encapsulates the essential entanglement properties of a quantum many-body system. From the EH, one can extract a variety of entanglement quantities, such as entanglement entropies, negativity, and the entanglement spectrum. However, its general analytical form remains largely unknown. While the Bisognano-Wichmann theorem gives an exact EH form for Lorentz-invariant field theories, its validity on lattice systems is limited, especially when Lorentz invariance is absent. In this work, we propose a general scheme based on the lattice-Bisognano-Wichmann (LBW) ansatz and multi-replica-trick quantum Monte Carlo methods to numerically reconstruct the entanglement Hamiltonian in two-dimensional systems and systematically explore its applicability to systems without translational invariance, going beyond the original scope of the primordial Bisognano-Wichmann theorem. Various quantum phases--including gapped and gapless phases, critical points, and phases with either discrete or continuous symmetry breaking--are investigated, demonstrating the versatility of our method in reconstructing entanglement Hamiltonians. Furthermore, we find that when the entanglement boundary of a system is ordinary (i.e., free from surface anomalies), the LBW ansatz provides an accurate approximation well beyond Lorentz-invariant cases. Our work thus establishes a general framework for investigating the analytical structure of entanglement in the complex quantum many-body systems.
We study the scaling of the Renyi entanglement entropy of two disjoint blocks of critical lattice models described by conformal field theories with central charge c=1. We provide the analytic conformal field theory result for the second order Renyi entropy for a free boson compactified on an orbifold describing the scaling limit of the Ashkin-Teller (AT) model on the self-dual line. We have checked this prediction in cluster Monte Carlo simulations of the classical two dimensional AT model. We have also performed extensive numerical simulations of the anisotropic Heisenberg quantum spin-chain with tree-tensor network techniques that allowed to obtain the reduced density matrices of disjoint blocks of the spin-chain and to check the correctness of the predictions for Renyi and entanglement entropies from conformal field theory. In order to match these predictions, we have extrapolated the numerical results by properly taking into account the corrections induced by the finite length of the blocks to the leading scaling behavior.
We study the Rényi entanglement entropies of two disjoint intervals in XY chains. We exploit the exact solution of the model in terms of free Majorana fermions and we show how to construct the reduced density matrix in the spin variables by taking the Jordan–Wigner string between the two blocks properly into account. From this we can evaluate any Rényi entropy of finite integer order. We study in detail critical XX and Ising chains and we show that the asymptotic results for large blocks agree with recent conformal field theory predictions if corrections to the scaling are included in the analysis correctly. We also report results for the gapped phase and after a quantum quench.