Generally speaking, entanglement entropy (EE) between two subregions of a gapped quantum many-body state is proportional to the area/length of their interface due to the short-range quantum correlation. However, the so-called area law is violated logarithmically in a quantum critical phase. Moreover, the subleading correction exists in long-range entangled topological phases. It is referred to as topological EE which is related to the quantum dimension of the collective excitation in the bulk. Furthermore, if a non-smooth sharp angle is in the presence of the subsystem boundary, a universal angle dependent geometric contribution is expected to appear in the subleading correction. In this work, we simultaneously explore the geometric and edge contributions in the integer quantum Hall (IQH) state and its edge reconstruction in a unified bipartite method. Their scaling is found to be consistent with conformal field theory (CFT) predictions and recent results of particle number fluctuation calculations.
Generally speaking, entanglement entropy (EE) between two subregions of a gapped quantum many-body state is proportional to the area/length of their interface due to the short-range quantum correlation. However, the so-called area law is violated logarithmically in a quantum critical phase. Moreover, the subleading correction exists in long-range entangled topological phases. It is referred to as topological EE which is related to the quantum dimension of the collective excitation in the bulk. Furthermore, if a non-smooth sharp angle is in the presence of the subsystem boundary, a universal angle dependent geometric contribution is expected to appear in the subleading correction. In this work, we simultaneously explore the geometric and edge contributions in the integer quantum Hall (IQH) state and its edge reconstruction in a unified bipartite method. Their scaling is found to be consistent with conformal field theory (CFT) predictions and recent results of particle number fluctuation calculations.
Boundaries constitute a rich playground for quantum many-body systems because they can lead to novel degrees of freedom such as protected boundary states in topological phases. Here, we study the ground state of integer quantum Hall systems in the presence of boundaries through the reduced density matrix of a spatial region. We work in the lowest Landau level and choose our region to intersect the boundary at arbitrary angles. The entanglement entropy (EE) contains a logarithmic contribution coming from the chiral edge modes, and matches the corresponding conformal field theory prediction. We uncover an additional contribution due to the boundary corners. We characterize the angle dependence of this boundary corner term, and compare it to the bulk corner EE. We further analyze the spatial structure of entanglement via the eigenstates associated with the reduced density matrix. The influence of the physical boundary and the region's geometry on the reduced density matrix is thus clarified. Finally, we test a bulk-boundary correspondence for the EE originally obtained for quantum critical systems such as conformal field theories in two spatial dimensions, and discuss the implications of our findings for other topological phases.
We study the quantum entanglement structure of integer quantum Hall states via the reduced density matrix of spatial subregions. In particular, we examine the eigenstates, spectrum, and entanglement entropy (EE) of the density matrix for various ground and excited states, with or without mass anisotropy. We focus on an important class of regions that contain sharp corners or cusps, leading to a geometric angle-dependent contribution to the EE. We unravel surprising relations by comparing this corner term at different fillings. We further find that the corner term, when properly normalized, has nearly the same angle dependence as numerous conformal field theories (CFTs) in two spatial dimensions, which hints at a broader structure. In fact, the Hall corner term is found to obey bounds that were previously obtained for CFTs. In addition, the low-lying entanglement spectrum and the corresponding eigenfunctions reveal ``excitations'' localized near corners. Finally, we present an outlook for fractional quantum Hall states.
Entanglement entropy (EE) contains signatures of many universal properties of conformal field theories (CFTs), especially in the presence of boundaries or defects. In particular, topological defects are interesting since they reflect internal symmetries of the CFT and have been extensively analyzed with field-theoretic techniques with striking predictions. So far, however, no lattice computation of EE has been available. Here, we present an ab initio analysis of EE for the Ising model in the presence of a topological defect. While the behavior of the EE depends, as expected, on the geometric arrangement of the subsystem with respect to the defect, we find that zero-energy modes give rise to crucial finite-size corrections. Importantly, contrary to the field-theory predictions, the universal subleading term in the EE when the defect lies at the edge of the subsystem arises entirely due to these zero-energy modes and is not directly related to the modular S matrix of the Ising CFT.
The subleading corner logarithmic corrections in entanglement entropy (EE) are crucial for revealing the universal characteristics of quantum critical points (QCPs), but they are challenging to detect. Motivated by recent developments in the stable computation of EE in (2+1)-dimensional [(2+1)D] quantum many-body systems, we have developed a method for directly measuring the corner contribution in EE with lower computational cost. The cornerstone of our approach is to measure the subtracted corner entanglement entropy (SCEE), defined as the difference between the EEs of subregions with the same boundary length for smooth and cornered boundaries during a sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo simulation. Our improved method inherently eliminates not only the area-law term of EE but also the subleading log corrections arising from Goldstone modes, leaving the universal corner contribution as the leading term of the SCEE with greatly improved data quality. Utilizing this advanced approach, we calculate the SCEE of the bilayer Heisenberg model on both square and honeycomb lattices across their (2+1)D O(3) QCPs with different opening angles on the entanglement boundary and obtain accurate values of the corresponding universal corner log coefficients. These findings will encourage further theoretical investigations to access controlled universal information for interacting conformal field theories at (2+1) dimensions.
Entanglement is a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics and plays an important role in characterizing many-body systems and quantum phase transitions. A quantitative measure of quantum correlations between subsystems is entanglement entropy. In this thesis, we study the entanglement entropy of an interacting quantum field theory, the O(N) model. In local quantum field theories, the leading-order contribution in the scaling of entanglement entropy obeys an area law. This dominant term is governed by short-distance physics near the entangling surface and depends on the ultraviolet regularization, making it non-universal. Beyond this lead- ing scaling behavior, entanglement entropy can contain subleading universal contributions, which encode intrinsic information about the underlying quantum field theory. In this thesis, we calculate one such universal term: the correlation length coefficient r, which appears as a correction to the entanglement entropy evaluated slightly away from the quantum critical point. The analysis is carried out in D = 2 + 1 spacetime dimensions for an infinite cylindrical geometry. We study the model in the vicinity of criticality using the large-N expansion, which enables controlled analytical calculations. Our main result is that the coefficient r scales linearly with the number of field components N . This behavior is consistent with the interpretation of r as a universal quantity associated with the degrees of freedom of the theory. The calculation is based on the replica method and renormalization group arguments, which are presented in detail. Finally, we discuss the physical meaning of the result and possible methods for verifying it, and we review related results for the O(N) model in different geometries.
We systematically investigate the finite size scaling behavior of the Rényi entanglement entropy (EE) of several representative 2d quantum many-body systems between a subregion and its complement, with smooth boundaries as well as boundaries with corners. In order to reveal the subleading correction, we investigate the quantity “subtracted EE” S^s(l) = S(2l) - 2S(l) S s ( l ) = S ( 2 l ) − 2 S ( l ) for each model, which is designed to cancel out the leading perimeter law. We find that (1) for a spin-1/2 model on a 2d square lattice whose ground state is the Neel order, the coefficient of the logarithmic correction to the perimeter law is consistent with the prediction based on the Goldstone modes; (2) for the (2+1)d ( 2 + 1 ) d O(3) Wilson-Fisher quantum critical point (QCP), realized with the bilayer antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model, a logarithmic subleading correction exists when there is sharp corner of the subregion, but for subregion with a smooth boundary our data suggests the absence of the logarithmic correction to the best of our efforts; (3) for the (2+1)d ( 2 + 1 ) d SU(2) J-Q _2 2 and J-Q _3 3 model for the deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP), we find a logarithmic correction for the EE even with smooth boundary.