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arXiv:2308.00614 · Journal of High Energy Physics

Entanglement entropies of an interval for the massless scalar field in the presence of a boundary

Benoit Estienne, Yacine Ikhlef, Andrei Rotaru, Erik Tonni C

Published May 20, 2024• 11 citations
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Abstract

A bstract We study the entanglement entropies of an interval for the massless compact boson either on the half line or on a finite segment, when either Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions are imposed. In these boundary conformal field theory models, the method of the branch point twist fields is employed to obtain analytic expressions for the two-point functions of twist operators. In the decompactification regime, these analytic predictions in the continuum are compared with the lattice numerical results in massless harmonic chains for the corresponding entanglement entropies, finding good agreement. The application of these analytic results in the context of quantum quenches is also discussed.

DOI
10.1007/jhep05(2024)236

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The entanglement spectra for a subsystem in a spin chain fine-tuned to a quantum-critical point contains signatures of the underlying quantum field theory that governs its low-energy properties. For an open chain with given boundary conditions described by a 2D conformal field theory~(CFT), the entanglement spectrum of the left/right half of the system coincides with a boundary CFT spectrum, where one of the boundary conditions arise due to the `entanglement cut'. The latter has been argued to be conformal and has been numerically found to be the `free' boundary condition for Ising, Potts and free boson theories. For these models, the `free' boundary condition for the lattice degree of freedom has a counterpart in the continuum theory. However, this is not true in general. Here, this question is analyzed for the unitary minimal models of 2D CFTs using the density matrix renormalization group technique. The entanglement spectra are computed for blocks of spins in open chains of A-type restricted solid-on-solid models with identical boundary conditions at the ends. The imposed boundary conditions are realized exactly for these lattice models due to their integrable nature. The obtained entanglement spectra are in good agreement with certain boundary CFT spectra. The boundary condition for the entanglement cut is found to be conformal and to coincide with the one with the highest boundary entropy. This identification enables determination of the exponents governing the unusual corrections to the entanglement entropy from the CFT partition functions. These are compared with numerical results.
A bstract We study the entanglement Hamiltonian of an interval for the free massless Dirac field in an inhomogeneous background on a finite segment and in the ground state. We consider a class of metrics that are Weyl equivalent to the flat metric through a Weyl factor that depends only on the spatial coordinate, with the same boundary condition imposed at both endpoints of the segment. The explicit form of the entanglement Hamiltonian is written as the sum of a local and a bilocal term. The weight function of the local term allows us to study a contour function for the entanglement entropies. For the model obtained from the continuum limit of the rainbow chain, the analytic expressions are compared with exact numerical results from the lattice, showing an excellent agreement.
A bstract We extend the branch point twist field approach for the calculation of entanglement entropies to time-dependent problems in 1+1-dimensional massive quantum field theories. We focus on the simplest example: a mass quench in the Ising field theory from initial mass m 0 to final mass m . The main analytical results are obtained from a perturbative expansion of the twist field one-point function in the post-quench quasi-particle basis. The expected linear growth of the Rényi entropies at large times mt ≫ 1 emerges from a perturbative calculation at second order. We also show that the Rényi and von Neumann entropies, in infinite volume, contain subleading oscillatory contributions of frequency 2 m and amplitude proportional to ( mt ) − 3 / 2 . The oscillatory terms are correctly predicted by an alternative perturbation series, in the pre-quench quasi-particle basis, which we also discuss. A comparison to lattice numerical calculations carried out on an Ising chain in the scaling limit shows very good agreement with the quantum field theory predictions. We also find evidence of clustering of twist field correlators which implies that the entanglement entropies are proportional to the number of subsystem boundary points.