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arXiv:2209.04393

Entanglement barrier and its symmetry resolution: theory and experiment

Aniket Rath, Vittorio Vitale, Sara Murciano, Matteo Votto, Jérôme Dubail, Richard Kueng, Cyril Branciard, Pasquale Calabrese, Benoît Vermersch

Published Sep 9, 2022• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The operator entanglement (OE) is a key quantifier of the complexity of a reduced density matrix. In out-of-equilibrium situations, e.g. after a quantum quench of a product state, it is expected to exhibit an entanglement barrier. The OE of a reduced density matrix initially grows linearly as entanglement builds up between the local degrees of freedom, it then reaches a maximum, and ultimately decays to a small finite value as the reduced density matrix converges to a simple stationary state through standard thermalization mechanisms. Here, by performing a new data analysis of the published experimental results of [Brydges et al., Science 364, 260 (2019)], we obtain the first experimental measurement of the OE of a subsystem reduced density matrix in a quantum many-body system. We employ the randomized measurements toolbox and we introduce and develop a new efficient method to post-process experimental data in order to extract higher-order density matrix functionals and access the OE. The OE thus obtained displays the expected barrier as long as the experimental system is large enough. For smaller systems, we observe a barrier with a double-peak structure, whose origin can be interpreted in terms of pairs of quasi-particles being reflected at the boundary of the qubit chain. As $U(1)$ symmetry plays a key role in our analysis, we introduce the notion of symmetry resolved operator entanglement (SROE), in addition to the total OE. To gain further insights into the SROE, we provide a thorough theoretical analysis of this new quantity in chains of non-interacting fermions, which, in spite of their simplicity, capture most of the main features of OE and SROE. In particular, we uncover three main physical effects: the presence of a barrier in any charge sector, a time delay for the onset of the growth of SROE, and an effective equipartition between charge sectors.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2209.04393

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The operator entanglement (OE) is a key quantifier of the complexity of a reduced density matrix. In out-of-equilibrium situations, e.g. after a quantum quench of a product state, it is expected to exhibit an entanglement barrier. The OE of a reduced density matrix initially grows linearly as entanglement builds up between the local degrees of freedom, it then reaches a maximum, and ultimately decays to a small finite value as the reduced density matrix converges to a simple stationary state through standard thermalization mechanisms. Here, by performing a new data analysis of the published experimental results of [Brydges et al., Science 364, 260 (2019)], we obtain the first experimental measurement of the OE of a subsystem reduced density matrix in a quantum many-body system. We employ the randomized measurements toolbox and we introduce and develop a new efficient method to post-process experimental data in order to extract higher-order density matrix functionals and access the OE. The OE thus obtained displays the expected barrier as long as the experimental system is large enough. For smaller systems, we observe a barrier with a double-peak structure, whose origin can be interpreted in terms of pairs of quasi-particles being reflected at the boundary of the qubit chain. As U(1)U(1)U(1) symmetry plays a key role in our analysis, we introduce the notion of symmetry resolved operator entanglement (SROE), in addition to the total OE. To gain further insights into the SROE, we provide a thorough theoretical analysis of this new quantity in chains of non-interacting fermions, which, in spite of their simplicity, capture most of the main features of OE and SROE. In particular, we uncover three main physical effects: the presence of a barrier in any charge sector, a time delay for the onset of the growth of SROE, and an effective equipartition between charge sectors.
Abstract The ‘operator entanglement’ of a quantum operator O is a useful indicator of its complexity, and, in one-dimension, of its approximability by matrix product operators. Here we focus on spin chains with a global U(1) conservation law, and on operators O with a well-defined U(1) charge, for which it is possible to resolve the operator entanglement of O according to the U(1) symmetry. We employ the notion of symmetry resolved operator entanglement (SROE) introduced in Rath et al (2023 PRX Quantum 4 010318) and extend the results of the latter paper in several directions. Using a combination of conformal field theory and of exact analytical and numerical calculations in critical free fermionic chains, we study the SROE of the thermal density matrix ρ β = e − β H and of charged local operators evolving in Heisenberg picture O = e i t H O e − i t H . Our main results are: i) the SROE of ρ β obeys the operator area law; ii) for free fermions, local operators in Heisenberg picture can have a SROE that grows logarithmically in time or saturates to a constant value; iii) there is equipartition of the entanglement among all the charge sectors except for a pair of fermionic creation and annihilation operators.
Abstract The study of the entanglement dynamics plays a fundamental role in understanding the behaviour of many-body quantum systems out of equilibrium. In the presence of a globally conserved charge, further insights are provided by the knowledge of the resolution of entanglement in the various symmetry sectors. Here, we carry on the program we initiated in Parez et al (2021 Phys. Rev. B 103 L041104), for the study of the time evolution of the symmetry resolved entanglement in free fermion systems. We complete and extend our derivations also by defining and quantifying a symmetry resolved mutual information. The entanglement entropies display a time delay that depends on the charge sector that we characterise exactly. Both entanglement entropies and mutual information show effective equipartition in the scaling limit of large time and subsystem size. Furthermore, we argue that the behaviour of the charged entropies can be quantitatively understood in the framework of the quasiparticle picture for the spreading of entanglement, and hence we expect that a proper adaptation of our results should apply to a large class of integrable systems. We also find that the number entropy grows logarithmically with time before saturating to a value proportional to the logarithm of the subsystem size.
The time evolution of the entanglement entropy is a key concept to understand the structure of a nonequilibrium quantum state. In a large class of models, such evolution can be understood in terms of a semiclassical picture of moving quasiparticles spreading the entanglement throughout the system. However, it is not yet known how the entanglement splits between the sectors of an internal local symmetry of a quantum many-body system. Here, guided by the examples of conformal field theories and free-fermion chains, we show that the quasiparticle picture can be adapted to this goal, leading to a general conjecture for the charged entropies whose Fourier transform gives the desired symmetry-resolved entanglement Sn(q){S}_{n}(q)Sn​(q). We point out two physically relevant effects that should be easily observed in atomic experiments: a delay time for the onset of Sn(q){S}_{n}(q)Sn​(q) which grows linearly with $|\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}q|$ (the difference between the charge qqq and its mean value) and an effective equipartition when $|\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}q|$ is much smaller than the subsystem size.
Entanglement and symmetries are two pillars of our understanding of modern Physics, but surprisingly the study of the interplay between these two fundamental concepts has become the subject of an intense research area only in the last few years. In particular, the resolution of entanglement in the various symmetry sectors of a quantum many-body system with a global conserved charge gained a lot of interest within the entanglement community. As shown in some experimental papers, the study of this symmetry resolved entanglement is necessary for a better understanding of the non-equilibrium dynamics of quantum many-body systems. This Thesis is devoted to the study of the symmetry resolution of the entanglement measures in free fermionic systems and Conformal Field Theories. It is organised as follows. In Chap. 1 we give an overview of the main definitions and concepts related to the entanglement and its measures in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Then, we specialize to the case of conformal field theories, to derive expressions of the entanglement entropy and negativity in all the cases that will be examined in the second part of the Thesis. We finally illustrate the main free-fermionic techniques that will be used to perform the analytical as well as numerical lattice calculations. In Chap. 2, we consider a 111-dimensional system of free fermions hopping on a lattice, in which the conserved U(1)U(1)U(1) charge is the total particle number. We evaluate the symmetry resolved R'enyi and entanglement entropies determining exactly all the non-universal constants and logarithmic corrections to the scaling, thanks to the so-called Fisher-Hartwig conjecture. In Chap. 3, we study the symmetry resolved entanglement entropies in 111-dimensional systems in presence of boundaries, considering the cases of an interval starting from the boundary and disconnected from it. We evaluate the charged and symmetry resolved entropies for conformal invariant theories and a semi-infinite chain of free fermions, finding entanglement equipartition. Using a generalization of the lattice calculations performed in Chap. 2, we also evaluate the first term breaking equipartition for the free fermionic chain. In Chap. 4, we study the symmetry resolution of the entanglement negativity in free fermionic systems, which admits a decomposition in terms of the charge imbalance between the two subsystems. We use conformal field theory to derive the universal behavior of the charge imbalance resolved negativity for a free Dirac field at finite temperature and size. For the lattice version of the Dirac filed, we also determine exactly the model-dependent terms using the Fisher-Hartwig conjecture. We find that at leading order the charge imbalance resolved negativity verifies equipartition. For the lattice model, we also evaluate the first corrections to this equipartition. In Chap. 5, we study the time evolution of the symmetry resolved entanglement entropy and a suitably defined symmetry resolved mutual information in a system of free fermions after a quench. In the context of free fermions and conformal field theories, we are able to provide analytical results for the time-dependent charged and resolved entropies, and shed light on two new physical phenomena. First, the symmetry resolved R'enyi entropies start evolving with a calculable time delay that depends on the charge sector. Second, there is an effective equipartition of the entanglement in the limit of large subsystem size. For free fermions, we also find that effective equipartition is verified by the mutual information. We expect that these phenomena occur in more general quantum systems, as they can be understood from the quasiparticle picture for the spreading of entanglement. In the Appendix, we give an overview of conformal field theory, reporting the main concepts and formulas that are needed for a more complete understanding of the previous Chapters.
The presence of symmetries can lead to nontrivial dynamics of operator entanglement in open quantum many-body systems, which characterizes the cost of a matrix product density operator representation of the density matrix in tensor-network methods and provides insights into the corresponding classical simulability. One example is U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1)-symmetric open quantum systems with dephasing, in which the operator entanglement increases logarithmically at late times instead of being suppressed by the dephasing. Here we numerically study the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of operator entanglement in a dissipative quantum many-body system with the more complicated SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2) symmetry and dissipations beyond dephasing. We show that after the initial rise and fall, the operator entanglement increases again in a logarithmic manner at late times in the SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2)-symmetric case. We find that this behavior can be fully understood from the corresponding U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) subsymmetry by considering the symmetry-resolved operator entanglement. Especially, the probability distribution of different U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) sectors also follows the Gaussian distribution observed in the U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1)-symmetric case with dephasing, with the variance growing as a power law. But unlike the latter, both the classical Shannon entropy associated with the probabilities for the half system to be in different symmetry sectors and the corresponding symmetry-resolved operator entanglement now make nontrivial contributions to the late-time logarithmic growth of operator entanglement in our SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2)-symmetric case. Our results show evidence that the logarithmic growth of operator entanglement at long times is a generic behavior of dissipative quantum many-body dynamics with U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) as the symmetry or subsymmetry and for broader dissipations beyond dephasing, although more analytical and numerical proof from future studies is still required for this conjecture. By breaking the SU(2)\mathrm{SU}(2)SU(2) symmetry of our quantum many-body dynamics to U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1), we also show that the latter property---the logarithmic growth behavior of operator entanglement for broader dissipations beyond dephasing---is valid even for open quantum systems with only U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) symmetry.