Abstract The statistical mechanics characterization of finite subsystems embedded in an infinite system is a fundamental question of quantum physics. Nevertheless, a full closed form for all required entropic measures does not exist in the general case, even for free systems, when the finite system in question is composed of several disjoint intervals. Here we develop a mathematical framework based on the Riemann–Hilbert approach to treat this problem in the one-dimensional case where the finite system is composed of two disjoint intervals and in the thermodynamic limit (both intervals and the space between them contains an infinite number of lattice sites and the result is given as a thermodynamic expansion). To demonstrate the usefulness of our method, we compute the change in the entanglement and negativity spectra namely the spectrum of eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix with or without time reversal of one of the intervals. We do this in the case that the distance between the intervals is much larger than their size. The method we use can be easily applied to compute any power in an expansion in the ratio of the distance between the intervals to their size. We expect these results to provide the necessary mathematical apparatus to address relevant questions in concrete physical scenarios, namely the structure and extent of quantum correlations in fermionic systems subject to local environments.
Abstract The statistical mechanics characterization of finite subsystems embedded in an infinite system is a fundamental question of quantum physics. Nevertheless, a full closed form for all required entropic measures does not exist in the general case, even for free systems, when the finite system in question is composed of several disjoint intervals. Here we develop a mathematical framework based on the Riemann–Hilbert approach to treat this problem in the one-dimensional case where the finite system is composed of two disjoint intervals and in the thermodynamic limit (both intervals and the space between them contains an infinite number of lattice sites and the result is given as a thermodynamic expansion). To demonstrate the usefulness of our method, we compute the change in the entanglement and negativity spectra namely the spectrum of eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix with or without time reversal of one of the intervals. We do this in the case that the distance between the intervals is much larger than their size. The method we use can be easily applied to compute any power in an expansion in the ratio of the distance between the intervals to their size. We expect these results to provide the necessary mathematical apparatus to address relevant questions in concrete physical scenarios, namely the structure and extent of quantum correlations in fermionic systems subject to local environments.
Abstract We calculate the entanglement entropy of a non-contiguous subsystem of a chain of free fermions. The starting point is a formula suggested by Jin and Korepin, arXiv: 1104.1004 , for the reduced density of states of two disjoint intervals with lattice sites P = {1, 2, …, m} ∪ {2m + 1, 2m + 2, …, 3m}, which applies to this model. As a first step in the asymptotic analysis of this system, we consider its simplification to two disjoint intervals separated just by one site, and we rigorously calculate the mutual information between these two blocks and the rest of the chain. In order to compute the entropy we need to study the asymptotic behaviour of an inverse Toeplitz matrix with Fisher–Hartwig symbol using the the Riemann–Hilbert method.
Abstract We employ a mathematical framework based on the Riemann-Hilbert approach developed by Bettelheim et al (2022 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 55 135001) to study logarithmic negativity of two intervals of free fermions in the case where the size of the intervals as well as the distance between them is macroscopic. We find that none of the eigenvalues of the density matrix become negative, but rather they develop a small imaginary value, leading to non-zero logarithmic negativity. As an example, we compute negativity at half-filling and for intervals of equal size we find a result of order <?CDATA (log(N))−1?> ( log ( N ) ) − 1 , where N is the typical length scale in units of the lattice spacing. One may compute logarithmic negativity in further situations, but we find that the results are non-universal, depending non-smoothly on the Fermi level and the size of the intervals in units of the lattice spacing.
We report on a systematic approach for the calculation of the negativity in the ground state of a one-dimensional quantum field theory. The partial transpose of the reduced density matrix of a subsystem A = A 1 ∪ A 2 is explicitly constructed as an imaginary-time path integral and from this the replicated traces are obtained. The logarithmic negativity is then the continuation to n → 1 of the traces of the even powers. For pure states, this procedure reproduces the known results. We then apply this method to conformally invariant field theories (CFTs) in several different physical situations for infinite and finite systems and without or with boundaries. In particular, in the case of two adjacent intervals of lengths ℓ 1 ,ℓ 2 in an infinite system, we derive the result ∼ ( c /4)ln(ℓ 1 ℓ 2 /(ℓ 1 + ℓ 2 )), where c is the central charge. For the more complicated case of two disjoint intervals, we show that the negativity depends only on the harmonic ratio of the four end points and so is manifestly scale invariant. We explicitly calculate the scale invariant functions for the replicated traces in the case of the CFT for the free compactified boson, but we have not so far been able to obtain the n → 1 continuation for the negativity even in the limit of large compactification radius. We have checked all our findings against exact numerical results for the harmonic chain which is described by a non-compactified free boson.
The entanglement spectrum of a pure state of a bipartite system is the full set of eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix obtained from tracing out one part. Such spectra are known in several cases to contain important information beyond that in the entanglement entropy. This paper studies the entanglement spectrum for a variety of critical and near-critical quantum lattice models in one dimension, chiefly by the infinite time evolving block decimation (iTEBD) numerical method, which enables both integrable and non-integrable models to be studied. We find that the distribution of eigenvalues in the entanglement spectra agrees with an approximate result derived by Calabrese and Lefevre to an accuracy of a few per cent for all models studied. This result applies whether the correlation length is intrinsic or generated by the finite matrix size accessible in iTEBD. For the transverse Ising model, the known exact results from Peschel and Eisler for the entanglement spectrum are used to confirm the validity of the iTEBD approach. For more general models, no exact result is available but the iTEBD results directly test the hypothesis that all moments of the reduced density matrix are determined by a single parameter.
Abstract Out-of-equilibrium states of many-body systems tend to evade a description by standard statistical mechanics, and their uniqueness is epitomized by the possibility of certain long-range correlations that cannot occur in equilibrium. In quantum many-body systems, coherent correlations of this sort may lead to the emergence of remarkable entanglement structures. In this work, we analytically study the asymptotic scaling of quantum correlation measures—the mutual information (MI) and the fermionic negativity—within the zero-temperature steady state of voltage-biased free fermions on a one-dimensional lattice containing a non-interacting impurity. Previously, we have shown that two subsystems on opposite sides of the impurity exhibit volume-law entanglement, which is independent of the absolute distances of the subsystems from the impurity. Here, we go beyond that result and derive the exact form of the subleading logarithmic corrections to the extensive terms of correlation measures, in excellent agreement with numerical calculations. In particular, the logarithmic term of the MI asymptotics can be encapsulated in a concise formula, depending only on simple four-point ratios of subsystem length scales and on the impurity scattering probabilities at the Fermi energies. This echoes the case of equilibrium states, where such logarithmic terms may convey universal information about the physical system. To compute these exact results, we devise a hybrid method that relies on Toeplitz determinant asymptotics for correlation matrices in both real space and momentum space, successfully circumventing the inhomogeneity of the system. This method could potentially find wider use for analytical calculations of entanglement measures in similar scenarios.
Abstract The negativity Hamiltonian, defined as the logarithm of a partially transposed density matrix, provides an operatorial characterisation of mixed-state entanglement. However, so far, it has only been studied for the mixed-state density matrices corresponding to subsystems of globally pure states. Here, we consider as a genuine example of a mixed state the one-dimensional massless Dirac fermions in a system at finite temperature and size. As subsystems, we consider an arbitrary set of disjoint intervals. The structure of the corresponding negativity Hamiltonian resembles the one for the entanglement Hamiltonian in the same geometry: in addition to a local term proportional to the stress-energy tensor, each point is non-locally coupled to an infinite but discrete set of other points. However, when the lengths of the transposed and non-transposed intervals coincide, the structure remarkably simplifies and we retrieve the mild non-locality of the ground state negativity Hamiltonian. We also conjecture an exact expression for the negativity Hamiltonian associated to the twisted partial transpose, which is a Hermitian fermionic matrix. We finally obtain the continuum limit of both the local and bi-local operators from exact numerical computations in free-fermionic chains.