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arXiv:2003.03112 · SciPost Physics

Bounds on the entanglement entropy by the number entropy in non-interacting fermionic systems

Maximilian Kiefer-Emmanouilidis, Razmik Unanyan, Jesko Sirker, Michael Fleischhauer

Published Jun 3, 2020• 70 citations
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Abstract

Entanglement in a pure state of a many-body system can be characterized by the Rényi entropies S^{(\alpha)}=\ln\textrm{tr}(\rho^\alpha)/(1-\alpha) S ( α ) = ln tr ( ρ α ) / ( 1 − α ) of the reduced density matrix \rho ρ of a subsystem. These entropies are, however, difficult to access experimentally and can typically be determined for small systems only. Here we show that for free fermionic systems in a Gaussian state and with particle number conservation, S^{(2)} S ( 2 ) can be tightly bound—from above and below—by the much easier accessible Rényi number entropy S^{(2)}_N=-\ln \sum_n p^2(n) S N ( 2 ) = − ln ∑ n p 2 ( n ) which is a function of the probability distribution p(n) p ( n ) of the total particle number in the considered subsystem only. A dynamical growth in entanglement, in particular, is therefore always accompanied by a growth—albeit logarithmically slower—of the number entropy. We illustrate this relation by presenting numerical results for quenches in non-interacting one-dimensional lattice models including disorder-free, Anderson-localized, and critical systems with off-diagonal (bond) disorder.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphys.8.6.083

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Entanglement in a pure state of a many-body system can be characterized by the Rényi entropies S^{(\alpha)}=\ln\textrm{tr}(\rho^\alpha)/(1-\alpha) S ( α ) = ln tr ( ρ α ) / ( 1 − α ) of the reduced density matrix \rho ρ of a subsystem. These entropies are, however, difficult to access experimentally and can typically be determined for small systems only. Here we show that for free fermionic systems in a Gaussian state and with particle number conservation, S^{(2)} S ( 2 ) can be tightly bound—from above and below—by the much easier accessible Rényi number entropy S^{(2)}_N=-\ln \sum_n p^2(n) S N ( 2 ) = − ln ∑ n p 2 ( n ) which is a function of the probability distribution p(n) p ( n ) of the total particle number in the considered subsystem only. A dynamical growth in entanglement, in particular, is therefore always accompanied by a growth—albeit logarithmically slower—of the number entropy. We illustrate this relation by presenting numerical results for quenches in non-interacting one-dimensional lattice models including disorder-free, Anderson-localized, and critical systems with off-diagonal (bond) disorder.
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Fermionic Gaussian states are a fundamental tool in many-body physics, faithfully representing non-interacting quantum systems and allowing for efficient numerical simulations. Given a many-body wave function, it is therefore interesting to ask how much it differs from that of a Gaussian state, as quantified by the notion of non-Gaussianity. In this work, we relate measures of non-Gaussianity with the Shannon entropy of the particle-number distribution, coinciding with the particle-number asymmetry for pure states. We derive a lower bound on the relative entropy of non-Gaussianity in terms of the exponential of the Shannon entropy, and study numerically its tightness for large system sizes. Our bound is non-trivial for large values of the asymmetry and relies on the concentration of the particle-number distribution of (mixed) fermionic Gaussian states. Since the Shannon entropy of the particle-number distribution is often efficient to compute or experimentally measure, our results can be viewed as a practical way to lower bound non-Gaussianity, highlighting a non-trivial interplay with particle-number asymmetry.
Abstract Entanglement entropy under a particle bipartition generates complementary information to mode entanglement because it is sensitive to interactions and particle statistics at leading order and does not depend on any externally imposed length scale. In this paper, we investigate the particle entanglement entropy in a system of N interacting spinless lattice fermions in one spatial dimension by combining bosonization techniques with exact and approximate numerical methods. We introduce a general scaling form for the fermionic particle entanglement entropy captured by a shape function that enters as an extensive interaction-induced correction to a known free fermion result. A general asymptotic expansion in the total number of particles demonstrates that its form is robust for different values of the Rényi index and highlights how quantum correlations are encoded in the n-particle density matrix of a pure many-body quantum state.
We prove rigorous bounds on the growth of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-R\'enyi entropies ${S}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}(t)$ (the von Neumann entropy being the special case $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1$) associated with any subsystem AAA of a general lattice quantum many-body system with finite on-site Hilbert space dimension. For completely nonlocal Hamiltonians, we show that the instantaneous growth rates $|{S}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{\ensuremath{'}}(t)|$ (with $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\ne}1$) can be exponentially larger than $|{S}_{1}^{\ensuremath{'}}(t)|$ as a function of the subsystem size ∣A∣|A|∣A∣. For DDD-dimensional systems with geometric locality, we prove bounds on $|{S}_{\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{\ensuremath{'}}(t)|$ that depend on the decay rate of interactions with distance. When $\ensuremath{\alpha}=1$, the bound is ∣A∣|A|∣A∣ independent for all power-law decaying interactions $V(r)\ensuremath{\sim}{r}^{\ensuremath{-}w}$ with w>2D+1w>2D+1w>2D+1. However, for $\ensuremath{\alpha}>1$, the bound is ∣A∣|A|∣A∣ independent only when the interactions are finite-range or decay faster than $V(r)\ensuremath{\sim}{e}^{\ensuremath{-}c\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{r}^{D}}$ for some ccc depending on the local Hilbert space dimension. Using similar arguments, we also prove bounds on kkk-local systems with or without geometric locality. A central theme of this work is that the value of $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ strongly influences the interplay between locality and instantaneous entanglement growth. In other words, the von Neumann entropy and the $\ensuremath{\alpha}$-R\'enyi entropies cannot be regarded as proxies for each other in studies of entanglement dynamics. We compare these bounds with analytic and numerical results on Hamiltonians with varying degrees of locality and find concrete examples that almost saturate the bound for nonlocal dynamics.
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