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arXiv:2301.02326 · SciPost Physics Core

Entanglement Rényi entropies from ballistic fluctuation theory: The free fermionic case

Giuseppe Del Vecchio Del Vecchio, Benjamin Doyon, Paola Ruggiero

Published Feb 14, 2024• 15 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The large-scale behaviour of entanglement entropy in finite-density states, in and out of equilibrium, can be understood using the physical picture of particle pairs. However, the full theoretical origin of this picture is not fully established yet. In this work, we clarify this picture by investigating entanglement entropy using its connection with the large-deviation theory for thermodynamic and hydrodynamic fluctuations. We apply the universal framework of Ballistic Fluctuation Theory (BFT), based the Euler hydrodynamics of the model, to correlation functions of branch-point twist fields, the starting point for computing Rényi entanglement entropies within the replica approach. Focusing on free fermionic systems in order to illustrate the ideas, we show that both the equilibrium behavior and the dynamics of Rényi entanglement entropies can be fully derived from the BFT. In particular, we emphasise that long-range correlations develop after quantum quenches, and accounting for these explain the structure of the entanglement growth. We further show that this growth is related to fluctuations of charge transport, generalising to quantum quenches the relation between charge fluctuations and entanglement observed earlier. The general ideas we introduce suggest that the large-scale behaviour of entanglement has its origin within hydrodynamic fluctuations.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphyscore.7.1.005

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The large-scale behaviour of entanglement entropy in finite-density states, in and out of equilibrium, can be understood using the physical picture of particle pairs. However, the full theoretical origin of this picture is not fully established yet. In this work, we clarify this picture by investigating entanglement entropy using its connection with the large-deviation theory for thermodynamic and hydrodynamic fluctuations. We apply the universal framework of Ballistic Fluctuation Theory (BFT), based the Euler hydrodynamics of the model, to correlation functions of branch-point twist fields, the starting point for computing Rényi entanglement entropies within the replica approach. Focusing on free fermionic systems in order to illustrate the ideas, we show that both the equilibrium behavior and the dynamics of Rényi entanglement entropies can be fully derived from the BFT. In particular, we emphasise that long-range correlations develop after quantum quenches, and accounting for these explain the structure of the entanglement growth. We further show that this growth is related to fluctuations of charge transport, generalising to quantum quenches the relation between charge fluctuations and entanglement observed earlier. The general ideas we introduce suggest that the large-scale behaviour of entanglement has its origin within hydrodynamic fluctuations.
The charged moments of a reduced density matrix provide a natural starting point for deriving symmetry-resolved Rényi and entanglement entropies, which quantify how entanglement is distributed among symmetry sectors in the presence of a global internal symmetry in a quantum many-body system. In this work, we study charged moments within the framework of Ballistic Fluctuation Theory (BFT). This theory describes large-scale ballistic fluctuations of conserved charges and associated currents and, by exploiting the height-field formulation of twist fields, gives access to the asymptotic behaviour of their two-point correlation functions. In Del Vecchio Del Vecchio et al. [1][1][1], this approach was applied to the special case of branch-point twist fields used to compute entanglement entropies within the replica approach. Here, we extend those results by applying BFT to composite branch-point twist fields, obtained by inserting an additional gauge field. Focusing on free fermions, we derive analytic expressions for charged Rényi entropies both at equilibrium, in generalized Gibbs ensembles, and out of equilibrium following a quantum quench from U(1)U(1)U(1) preserving pair producing integrable initial states. In the latter case, our results agree with the conjecture arising from the quasiparticle picture.
We study the dynamics of charge fluctuations after homogeneous quantum quenches in one-dimensional systems with ballistic transport. For short but macroscopic times where the non-trivial dynamics is largely dominated by long-range correlations, a simple expression for the associated full counting statistics can be obtained by hydrodynamic arguments. This formula links the non-equilibrium charge fluctuation after the quench to the fluctuations of the associated current after a charge-biased inhomogeneous modification of the original quench which corresponds to the paradigmatic partitioning protocol. Under certain assumptions, the fluctuations in the latter case can be expressed by explicit closed form formulas in terms of thermodynamic and hydrodynamic quantities via the Ballistic Fluctuation Theory. In this work, we identify precise physical conditions for the applicability of a fully hydrodynamic theory, and provide a detailed analysis explicitly demonstrating how such conditions are met and how this leads to such hydrodynamic treatment. We discuss these conditions at length in non-relativistic free fermions, where calculations become feasible and allow for cross-checks against exact results. In physically relevant cases, strong long-range correlations can complicate the hydrodynamic picture, but our formula still correctly reproduces the first cumulants.
The notion of operator growth in quantum systems furnishes a bridge between transport and the generation of entanglement between different parts of the system under quantum dynamics. We define a measure of operator growth in terms of subsystem operator Rényi entropy, which provides a state-independent measure of operator growth, unlike entanglement entropies, and the usual measures of operator growth like out-of-time-order correlators. We show that the subsystem operator Rényi entropy encodes both spatial and temporal information, and thus can directly connect to transport for a local operator related to a conserved quantity. We construct a unified Schwinger-Keldysh (SK) field theory formalism for the time evolution of operator Rényi entropy and entanglement entropies of initial pure states. We use the SK field theory to obtain the operator Rényi and state entanglement entropies in terms of infinite-temperature and vacuum Keldysh Green's functions, respectively, for non-interacting systems. We apply the method to explore the connection between operator and entanglement growth, and transport in non-interacting systems with quasiperiodic and random disorder, like the one- and two-dimensional Aubry-André models and the two-dimensional Anderson model. In particular, we show that the growth of subsystem operator Rényi entropy and state von Neumann and Rényi entanglement entropies can capture both ballistic and sub-ballistic transport behaviors, like diffusive and anomalous diffusive transport, as well as localization in these systems.
We introduce a new universal framework describing fluctuations and correlations in quantum and classical many-body systems, at the Euler hydrodynamic scale of space and time. The framework adapts the ideas of the conventional macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT) to systems that support ballistic transport. The resulting “ballistic MFT” (BMFT) is solely based on the Euler hydrodynamics data of the many-body system. Within this framework, mesoscopic observables are classical random variables depending only on the fluctuating conserved densities, and Euler-scale fluctuations are obtained by deterministically transporting thermodynamic fluctuations via the Euler hydrodynamics. Using the BMFT, we show that long-range correlations in space generically develop over time from long-wavelength inhomogeneous initial states in interacting models. This result, which we verify by numerical calculations, challenges the long-held paradigm that at the Euler scale, fluid cells may be considered uncorrelated. We also show that the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem for non-equilibrium ballistic transport follows purely from time-reversal invariance of the Euler hydrodynamics. We check the validity of the BMFT by applying it to integrable systems, and in particular the hard-rod gas, with extensive simulations that confirm our analytical results.
Abstract We employ the quasiparticle picture of entanglement evolution to obtain an effective description for the out-of-equilibrium entanglement Hamiltonian at the hydrodynamical scale following quantum quenches in free fermionic systems in two or more spatial dimensions. Specifically, we begin by applying dimensional reduction techniques in cases where the geometry permits, building directly on established results from one-dimensional systems. Subsequently, we generalize the analysis to encompass a wider range of geometries. We obtain analytical expressions for the entanglement Hamiltonian valid at the ballistic scale, which reproduce the known quasiparticle picture predictions for the Renyi entropies and full counting statistics. We also numerically validate the results with excellent precision by considering quantum quenches from several initial configurations.
We use macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT) to establish the typicality of charge-transfer statistics and entanglement dynamics in the quantum symmetric exclusion process, a model of stochastically hopping free fermions with diffusive transport and long-range quantum coherence. We show that the leading long-time charge-transfer full counting statistics of individual noise realizations coincide almost surely with those of the classical symmetric exclusion process (SSEP), in equilibrium and following quenches from arbitrary occupation-diagonal product states. Our results apply to transient fluctuations in the thermodynamic limit, extending previous work that has primarily focused on stationary regimes. Our approach compares the noise averages of the charge-transfer generating function and its inverse. The former reduces to SSEP, while the latter maps to an auxiliary Brownian energy process whose MFT saddle-point problem is related to that of SSEP, yielding matching large-deviation exponents. Through free-fermion identities relating entanglement to subsystem-number fluctuations, this establishes the self-averaging of the covariance-matrix eigenvalue distribution and of Rényi and von Neumann entropies. We obtain asymptotically exact predictions for entanglement growth from domain-wall and Néel initial states, in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.