We study the scaling of logarithmic negativity between adjacent subsystems in critical fermion chains with various inhomogeneous modulations through numerically calculating its recently established lower and upper bounds. For random couplings, as well as for a relevant aperiodic modulation of the couplings, which induces an aperiodic singlet state, the bounds are found to increase logarithmically with the subsystem size, and both prefactors agree with the predicted values characterizing the corresponding asymptotic singlet state. For the marginal Fibonacci modulation, the prefactors in front of the logarithm are different for the lower and the upper bound and vary smoothly with the strength of the modulation. In the delocalized phase of the quasiperiodic Harper model, the scaling of the bounds of the logarithmic negativity and that of the entanglement entropy are compatible with the logarithmic scaling of the homogeneous chain. At the localization transition, the scaling of the above entanglement characteristics holds to be logarithmic, but the prefactors are significantly reduced compared to those of the translationally invariant case, roughly by the same factor.
We study the entanglement entropy of blocks of contiguous spins in non-periodic (quasi-periodic or more generally aperiodic) critical Heisenberg, XX and quantum Ising spin chains, e.g. in Fibonacci chains. For marginal and relevant aperiodic modulations, the entanglement entropy is found to be a logarithmic function of the block size with log-periodic oscillations. The effective central charge, c eff , defined through the constant in front of the logarithm may depend on the ratio of couplings and can even exceed the corresponding value in the homogeneous system. In the strong modulation limit, the ground state is constructed by a renormalization group method and the limiting value of c eff is exactly calculated. Keeping the ratio of the block size and the system size constant, the entanglement entropy exhibits a scaling property, however, the corresponding scaling function may be nonanalytic.
We study the scaling of the entanglement entropy in different classes of one-dimensional fermionic quasiperiodic systems with and without pairing, focusing on multifractal critical points/phases. We find that the entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with the subsystem size
NA with a proportionality coefficient
C, as in homogeneous critical points, apart from possible additional small oscillations. In the absence of pairing, we find that the entanglement entropy coefficient
C is nonuniversal and depends significantly and nontrivially both on the model parameters and electron filling, in multifractal critical points. In some of these points,
C can take values close to the homogeneous (or ballistic) system, although it typically takes smaller values. We find a close relation between the behavior of the entanglement entropy and the small-
q (long-wavelength) dependence of the momentum structure factor
S(q).
S(q) increases linearly with
q as in the homogeneous case, with a slope that grows with
C. In the presence of pairing, we find that even the addition of small anomalous terms affects very significantly the scaling of the entanglement entropy compared to the unpaired case. In particular, we focused on topological phase transitions for which the gap closes with either extended or critical multifractal states. In the former case, the scaling of the entanglement entropy mirrors the behavior observed at the critical points of the homogeneous Kitaev chain, while in the latter, it shows only slight deviations arising at small length scales. In contrast with the unpaired case, we always observe $\mathcal{C}\ensuremath{\approx}1/6$ for different critical points, the known value for the homogeneous Kitaev chain with periodic boundary conditions.
Abstract Defects in two-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) contain signatures of their characteristics. In this work, we analyze entanglement properties of subsystems in the presence of energy and duality defects in the Ising CFT using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) technique. In particular, we compute the entanglement entropy (EE) and the entanglement negativity (EN) in the presence of defects. For the EE, we consider the cases when the defect lies within the subsystem and at the edge of the subsystem. We show that the EE for the duality defect exhibits fundamentally different characteristics compared to the energy defect due to the existence of localized and delocalized zero energy modes. Of special interest is the nontrivial ‘finite-size correction’ in the EE obtained recently using free fermion computations [1]. These corrections arise when the subsystem size is appreciable compared to the total system size and lead to a deviation from the usual logarithmic scaling characteristic of one-dimensional quantum-critical systems. Using matrix product states with open and infinite boundary conditions, we numerically demonstrate the disappearance of the zero mode contribution for finite subsystem sizes in the thermodynamic limit. Our results provide further support to the recent free fermion computations, but clearly contradict earlier analytical field theory calculations based on twisted torus partition functions. Subsequently, we compute the logarithm of the EN (log-EN) between two disjoint subsystems separated by a defect. We show that the log-EN scales logarithmically with the separation of the subsystems. However, the coefficient of this logarithmic scaling yields a continuously-varying effective central charge that is different from that obtained from analogous computations of the EE. The defects leave their fingerprints in the subleading term of the scaling of the log-EN. Furthermore, the log-EN receives similar ‘finite size corrections’ like the EE which leads to deviations from its characteristic logarithmic scaling.
Abstract We investigate the dynamics of the fermionic logarithmic negativity in a free-fermion chain with a localized loss, which acts as a dissipative impurity. The chain is initially prepared in a generic Fermi sea. In the standard hydrodynamic limit of large subsystems and long times, with their ratio fixed, the negativity between two subsystems is described by a simple formula, which depends only on the effective absorption coefficient of the impurity. The negativity grows linearly at short times, then saturating to a volume-law scaling. Physically, this reflects the continuous production with time of entangling pairs of excitations at the impurity site. Interestingly, the negativity is not the same as the Rényi mutual information with Rényi index 1 / 2 , in contrast with the case of unitary dynamics. This reflects the interplay between dissipative and unitary processes. The negativity content of the entangling pairs is obtained in terms of an effective two-state mixed density matrix for the subsystems. Criticality in the initial Fermi sea is reflected in the presence of logarithmic corrections. The prefactor of the logarithmic scaling depends on the loss rate, suggesting a nontrivial interplay between dissipation and criticality.
Using free-fermionic techniques we study the entanglement entropy of a block of contiguous spins in a large finite quantum Ising chain in a transverse field, with couplings of different types: homogeneous, periodically modulated and random. We carry out a systematic study of finite-size effects at the quantum critical point, and evaluate subleading corrections both for open and for periodic boundary conditions. For a block corresponding to a half of a finite chain, the position of the maximum of the entropy as a function of the control parameter (e.g. the transverse field) can define the effective critical point in the finite sample. On the basis of homogeneous chains, we demonstrate that the scaling behavior of the entropy near the quantum phase transition is in agreement with the universality hypothesis, and calculate the shift of the effective critical point, which has different scaling behaviors for open and for periodic boundary conditions.
We study the average entanglement entropy of blocks of contiguous spins in aperiodic XXZ chains which possess an aperiodic singlet phase at least in a certain limit of the coupling ratios. In this phase, where the ground state constructed by a real space renormalization group method consists (asymptotically) of independent singlet pairs, the average entanglement entropy is found to be a piecewise linear function of the block size. The enveloping curve of this function is growing logarithmically with the block size, with an effective central charge in front of the logarithm which is characteristic for the underlying aperiodic sequence. The aperiodic sequence producing the largest effective central charge is identified, and the latter is found to exceed the central charge of the corresponding homogeneous model. For marginal aperiodic modulations, numerical investigations performed for the XX model show a logarithmic dependence, as well, with an effective central charge varying continuously with the coupling ratio.