We study a vast family of continuum Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) states, which have their ground state encoded by a local quantum field theory. These describe certain quantum magnets, and are also important in quantum information. We prove the separability of the reduced density matrix of two disconnected subsystems, implying the absence of entanglement between the two subsystems---a stronger statement than the vanishing of logarithmic negativity. As a particular instance, we investigate the case where the ground state is described by a relativistic boson, which is relevant for certain magnets or Lifshitz critical points with dynamical exponent $z=2$, and we propose nontrivial deformations that preserve their RK structure. Specializing to 1D systems, we study a deformation that maps the ground state to the quantum harmonic oscillator, leading to a gap for the boson. We study the resulting correlation functions, and find that cluster decomposition is restored. We analytically compute the $c$ function for the entanglement entropy along a renormalization group flow for the wavefunction, which is found to be strictly decreasing as in CFTs. Finally, we comment on the relations to certain stoquastic quantum spin chains. We show that the Motzkin and Fredkin chains possess unusual entanglement properties not properly captured by previous studies.
We study a vast family of continuum Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) states, which have their ground state encoded by a local quantum field theory. These describe certain quantum magnets, and are also important in quantum information. We prove the separability of the reduced density matrix of two disconnected subsystems, implying the absence of entanglement between the two subsystems---a stronger statement than the vanishing of logarithmic negativity. As a particular instance, we investigate the case where the ground state is described by a relativistic boson, which is relevant for certain magnets or Lifshitz critical points with dynamical exponent z=2, and we propose nontrivial deformations that preserve their RK structure. Specializing to 1D systems, we study a deformation that maps the ground state to the quantum harmonic oscillator, leading to a gap for the boson. We study the resulting correlation functions, and find that cluster decomposition is restored. We analytically compute the c function for the entanglement entropy along a renormalization group flow for the wavefunction, which is found to be strictly decreasing as in CFTs. Finally, we comment on the relations to certain stoquastic quantum spin chains. We show that the Motzkin and Fredkin chains possess unusual entanglement properties not properly captured by previous studies.
Entanglement and correlations in z=2 Lifshitz theories under wavefunction renormalization group flow
Starting from the (d+1)-dimensional Lifshitz critical boson with dynamical exponent z=2, we propose two nontrivial deformations that preserve the Rokhsar-Kivelson structure where the groundstate is encoded in an underlying, local d-dimensional QFT. Specializing to d=1 spatial dimension, the first deformation maps the groundstate to the quantum harmonic oscillator, leading to a gap for the scalar. We study the resulting correlation functions, and find that Cluster Decomposition is restored. The special form of the groundstate allows to analytically compute the c-function for the entanglement entropy along a renormalization group (RG) flow for the wavefunction, which is found to be strictly decreasing as in conformal field theories (CFTs). From the entropic c-function, we obtain the corner term for the z=2 Lifshitz critical boson in (2+1)D in the small angle limit. The second deformation is non-Gaussian and yields a groundstate described by SL(2,R)-conformal quantum mechanics. This deformation preserves the conformal spatial symmetry of the groundstate, and constrains the form of the correlators and entanglement entropy. As a byproduct of our calculations, we obtain explicit results for the capacity of entanglement in Lifshitz theories and discuss their interpretation. We also prove the separability of the reduced density matrix of two disconnected subsystems for real-valued RK wavefunctions, implying the vanishing of logarithmic negativity. Finally, we comment on the relations to certain stoquastic quantum spin chains, the Motzkin and Fredkin chains.
We investigate separability and entanglement of Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) states and resonating valence-bond (RVB) states. These states play a prominent role in condensed matter physics, as they can describe quantum spin liquids and quantum critical states of matter, depending on their underlying lattices. For dimer RK states on arbitrary tileable graphs, we prove the exact separability of the reduced density matrix of k k disconnected subsystems, implying the absence of bipartite and multipartite entanglement between the subsystems. For more general RK states with local constraints, we argue separability in the thermodynamic limit, and show that any local RK state has zero logarithmic negativity, even if the density matrix is not exactly separable. In the case of adjacent subsystems, we find an exact expression for the logarithmic negativity in terms of partition functions of the underlying statistical model. For RVB states, we show separability for disconnected subsystems up to exponentially small terms in the distance d d between the subsystems, and that the logarithmic negativity is exponentially suppressed with d d . We argue that separability does hold in the scaling limit, even for arbitrarily small ratio d/L d / L , where L L is the characteristic size of the subsystems. Our results hold for arbitrary lattices, and encompass a large class of RK and RVB states, which include certain gapped quantum spin liquids and gapless quantum critical systems.
The following thesis focuses on the scaling of entanglement entropy in lower dimensions and is divided into three main parts. Chapter 2 studies the thermal reduced density matrices in fermion and spin systems on ladders. Chapter 3 studies the many-body localization phase transition in a Rokhsar-Kivelson type wave function. Chapter 4 studies the subleading correction term of entanglement entropy in 2+1 dimensional scale invariant systems. Chapter 5 studies the bulk-boundary correspondence in 3 + 1 dimensional topological phases and its entanglement entropy. In chapter 2, we investigate the reduced density matrices for a model of free fermions on a two-leg ladder (gapped by the inter-chain tunneling operator) and in 1/2 spin systems on a ladder with a gapped ground state using exact solutions and several controlled approximations. We calculate the reduced density matrix and the entanglement entropy for a leg of the ladder (i.e. cut made between the chains). In the fermionic system we find the exact form of the reduced density matrix for one of the chains and determine the entanglement spectrum explicitly. Here we find that in the weak tunneling limit of the ladder the entanglement entropy of one chain of the gapped ladder has a simple and universal form dictated by conformal invariance. In the case of the spin system, we consider the strong coupling limit by using perturbation theory and get the reduced density matrix by the Schmidt decomposition. The entanglement entropies of a general gapped system of two coupled conformal field theories (in 1+1 dimensions) is discussed using the replica trick and scaling arguments. We show that 1) for a system with a bulk gap, the reduced density matrix has the form of a thermal density matrix, 2) the long-wavelength modes of one subsystem (a chain) of a gapped coupled system are always thermal, 3) the von Neumann entropy equals to the thermodynamic entropy of one chain, and 4) the bulk gap plays the role of effective temperature. In chapter 3, we construct a family of many-body wave functions to study the many-body localization phase transition. The wave functions have a Rokhsar-Kivelson form, in which the weight for the configurations are chosen from the Gibbs weights of a classical spin glass model, known as the Random Energy Model, multiplied by a random sign structure to represent a highly excited state. These wave functions show a phase transition into an MBL phase. In addition, we see three regimes of entanglement scaling with subsystem size: scaling with entanglement corresponding to an infinite temperature thermal phase, constant scaling, and a sub-extensive scaling between these limits. Near the phase transition point, the fluctuations of the Renyi entropies are non-Gaussian. We find that Renyi entropies with different Renyi index transition into the MBL phase at different points and have different scaling behavior, suggesting a multifractal behavior. In chapter 4, we study the universal scaling behavior of the entanglement entropy of critical theories in 2+1 dimensions. We specially consider two fermionic scale-invariant models, free massless Dirac fermions and a model of fermions with quadratic band touching, and numerically study the two-cylinder entanglement entropy of the models on the torus. We find that in both cases the entanglement entropy satisfies the area law and has the subleading term which is a scaling function of the aspect ratios of the cylindrical regions. We test the scaling of entanglement in both the free fermion models using three possible scaling functions for the subleading term derived from a) the quasi-one-dimensional conformal field theory, b) the bosonic quantum Lifshitz model, and c) the holographic AdS/CFT correspondence. For the later case we construct an analytic scaling function using holography, appropriate for critical theories with a gravitational dual description. We find that the subleading term in the fermionic models is well described, for a range of aspect ratios, by the scaling form derived from the quantum Lifshitz model as well as that derived using the AdS/CFT correspondence (in this case only for the Dirac model). For the case where the fermionic models are placed on a square torus we find the fit to the different scaling forms is in agreement to surprisingly high precision. In chapter 5, we discuss (2+1)-dimensional gapless surface theories of bulk (3+1)-dimensional topological phases, such as the BF theory at level K, and its generalization. In particular, we put these theories on a flat (2+1) dimensional torus T3 parameterized by its modular parameters, and compute the partition functions obeying various twisted boundary conditions. We show the partition functions are transformed into each other under SL(3, Z) modular transformations, and furthermore establish the bulk-boundary correspondence in (3+1) dimensions by matching the modular S and T matrices computed from the boundary field theories with those computed in the bulk. We propose the three-loop braiding statistics can be studied by constructing the modular S and T matrices from an appropriate boundary field theory. We also study the EE for 3 + 1- dimensional topological phase with or without three-loop braiding phase.
Entanglement is one of the most intriguing features of quantum theory and a main resource in quantum information science. Ground states of quantum many-body systems with local interactions typically obey an “area law” which means that the entanglement entropy is proportional to the boundary length. It is exceptional when the system is gapless, and the area law had been believed to be violated by at most a logarithm over two decades. Recent discovery of Motzkin and Fredkin spin chain models is striking, since these models provide significant violation of the entanglement beyond the belief, growing as a square root of the volume in spite of local interactions. In this paper, we first analytically compute the Rényi entropy of the Motzkin and Fredkin models by careful treatment of asymptotic analysis. The Rényi entropy is an important quantity, since the whole spectrum of an entangled subsystem is reconstructed once the Rényi entropy is known as a function of its parameter. We find nonanalytic behavior of the Rényi entropy with respect to the parameter, which is a novel phase transition never seen in any other spin chain studied so far. Interestingly, similar behavior is seen in the Rényi entropy of Rokhsar–Kivelson states in two dimensions.
We study the concept of entanglement distance between two quantum states, which quantifies the amount of information shared between their reduced density matrices (RDMs). Using analytical arguments combined with density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and exact diagonalization (ED) calculations, we show that for gapless systems the entanglement distance has power law dependence on the energy separation and subsystem size, with ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{E}$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}$ exponents, respectively. Using conformal field theory (CFT) we find ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{E}=2$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}=4$ for Abelian theories with c=1, as in the case of free fermions. For non-Abelian CFTs ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{E}=0$, and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}$ is twice the conformal dimension of the thermal primary fields. For instance, for Z3 parafermion CFT ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{E}=1$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}=4/5$. For gapped 1+1 dimensional (1+1D) fermion systems, we show that the entanglement distance divides the low energy excitations into two branches with different values of ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{E}$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}$. These two branches are related to momentum transfers near zero and $\ensuremath{\pi}$. We also demonstrate that the entanglement distance reaches its maximum for degenerate states related through nonlocal operators such as Wilson loops. For example, degenerate ground states (GSs) of 2+1D topological states have maximum entanglement distance. In contrast, degenerate GSs related through confined anyon excitations such as genons have minimum entanglement distance. Various implications of this concept for quantum simulations are discussed. Finally, based on the ideas developed we discuss the computational complexity of DMRG algorithms that are capable of finding all degenerate GSs.
We derive some entanglement properties of the ground states for two classes of quantum spin chains described by the Fredkin model, for half-integer spins, and the Motzkin model, for integer ones. Since the ground states of the two models are known analytically, we can calculate exactly the entanglement entropy, the negativity and the quantum mutual information. We show, in particular, that these systems exhibit long-distance entanglement, namely two disjoint regions of the chains remain entangled even when their separation is sent to infinity, i.e. these systems are not affected by decoherence. This strongly entangled behavior, Finally, we show that this behavior involves disjoint segments located both at the edges and in the bulk of the chains.