In this short review, we present the key definitions, ideas and techniques involved in the study of symmetry resolved entanglement measures, with a focus on the symmetry resolved entanglement entropy. In order to be able to define such entanglement measures, it is essential that the theory under study possess an internal symmetry. Then, symmetry-resolved entanglement measures quantify the contribution to a particular entanglement measure that can be associated to a chosen symmetry sector. Our review focuses on conformal (gapless/massless/critical) and integrable (gapped/massive) quantum field theories, where the leading computational technique employs symmetry fields known as (composite) branch point twist fields.
In this short review, we present the key definitions, ideas and techniques involved in the study of symmetry resolved entanglement measures, with a focus on the symmetry resolved entanglement entropy. In order to be able to define such entanglement measures, it is essential that the theory under study possess an internal symmetry. Then, symmetry-resolved entanglement measures quantify the contribution to a particular entanglement measure that can be associated to a chosen symmetry sector. Our review focuses on conformal (gapless/massless/critical) and integrable (gapped/massive) quantum field theories, where the leading computational technique employs symmetry fields known as (composite) branch point twist fields.
Abstract All standard measures of bipartite entanglement in one-dimensional quantum field theories can be expressed in terms of correlators of branch point twist fields, here denoted by and . These are symmetry fields associated to cyclic permutation symmetry in a replica theory and having the smallest conformal dimension at the critical point. Recently, other twist fields (composite twist fields), typically of higher dimension, have been shown to play a role in the study of a new measure of entanglement known as the symmetry resolved entanglement entropy. In this paper we give an exact expression for the two-point function of a composite twist field that arises in the Ising field theory. In doing so we extend the techniques originally developed for the standard branch point twist field in free theories as well as an existing computation due to Horváth and Calabrese of the same two-point function which focused on the leading large-distance contribution. We study the ground state two-point function of the composite twist field and its conjugate . At criticality, this field can be defined as the leading field in the operator product expansion of and the disorder field µ. We find a general formula for log 〈 T μ ( 0 ) T μ † ( r ) 〉 and for (the derivative of) its analytic continuation to positive real replica numbers greater than 1. We check our formula for consistency by showing that at short distances it exactly reproduces the expected conformal dimension.
As Schroedinger already recognised one century ago, entanglement is at the core of quantum mechanics. Nowadays it turns out to be the fundamental notion behind many quantum phenomena, from quantum algorithms to gravity, passing by critical phenomena and topological phases of matter, triggering unexpected connections between apparently far branches of physics. At the center of all these ideas, we find the (Rényi) entanglement entropies, which are powerful entanglement measures that provide fundamental insights into the investigated system or theory. This motivates the development of techniques for determining it, such as the replica trick: its implementation via the path-integral finds a wide place in this thesis. For example, we develop an efficient strategy to compute a generalised version of the Rényi entropies for all the eigenstates of a (1+1)-dimensional conformal field theory. This represents the starting point for a simulation scheme ideal to compute the entanglement in more generic (1+1)-dimensional quantum field theories (QFTs), e.g. after a quench in the sine-Gordon field theory. The study of entanglement also intertwines with another pillar of modern physics, i.e. symmetries and how their presence influences the properties of a system. Given the interest in this connection, this thesis addresses the question of how the entanglement splits into the different sectors of an internal symmetry. We approach the problem first in the QFT context, both for the free Dirac and complex scalar fields in two-dimensional spacetime, which have an abelian conserved charge, and systems having an internal Lie group symmetry to tackle the non-abelian case. Another typical framework in which we study the symmetry resolution of entanglement is lattice models, where different techniques can be exploited in order to derive exact results, ranging from the corner transfer matrix for gapped integrable systems to the connection between quadratic lattice Hamiltonians and their two-point correlation functions. The symmetry resolution also concerns other entanglement measures, namely, we analyse the behaviour of the operator entanglement, i.e. a key quantifier of the complexity of an operator, the symmetry-resolved mutual information, the effect of symmetries on entanglement negativity. The latter quantity is a genuine measure of quantum correlations in mixed states and a consistent part of the thesis is about this subject. For example, we study its time evolution after a quench and we provide an operatorial characterisation for entanglement in mixed states, which we dub negativity Hamiltonian.
In this paper we continue the program initiated in Part I, that is the study of entanglement measures in the sine-Gordon model. In both parts, we have focussed on one specific technique, that is the well-known connection between branch point twist field correlators and measures of entanglement in 1+1D integrable quantum field theory. Our papers apply this technique for the first time to a non-diagonal theory with an involved particle spectrum, the sine-Gordon model. In this Part II we focus on a different entanglement measure, the symmetry resolved entanglement, and develop its associated twist field description, exploiting the underlying U(1) symmetry of the theory. In this context, conventional branch point twist fields are no longer the fields required, but instead we must work with one of their composite generalisations, which can be understood as the field resulting from the fusion of a standard branch point twist field and the sine-Gordon exponential field associated with U(1) symmetry. The resulting composite twist field has correlators which as usual admit a form factor expansion. In this paper we write the associated form factor equations and solve them for various examples in the breather sector by using the method of angular quantisation. We show that, in the attractive regime, this is the sector which provides the leading contribution to the symmetry resolved entropies, both R\'enyi and von Neumann. We compute the latter in the limit of a large region size and show that they satisfy the property of equipartition, that is the leading contribution to the symmetry resolved entanglement is independent of the symmetry sector.
Abstract The excess entanglement resulting from exciting a finite number of quasiparticles above the ground state of a free integrable quantum field theory has been investigated quite extensively in the literature. It has been found that it takes a very simple form, depending only on the number of excitations and their statistics. There is now mounting evidence that such formulae also apply to interacting and even higher-dimensional quantum theories. In this paper we study the entanglement content of such zero-density excited states focusing on the symmetry resolved entanglement, that is on 1+1D quantum field theories that possess an internal symmetry. The ratio of charged moments between the excited and grounds states, from which the symmetry resolved entanglement entropy can be obtained, takes a very simple and universal form, which in addition to the number and statistics of the excitations, now depends also on the symmetry charge. Using form factor techniques, we obtain both the ratio of moments and the symmetry resolved entanglement entropies in complex free theories which possess U(1) symmetry. The same formulae are found for simple qubit states.
Abstract We present a thorough analysis of the entanglement entropies related to different symmetry sectors of free quantum field theories (QFT) with an internal U(1) symmetry. We provide explicit analytic computations for the charged moments of Dirac and complex scalar fields in two spacetime dimensions, both in the massive and massless cases, using two different approaches. The first one is based on the replica trick, the computation of the partition function on Riemann surfaces with the insertion of a flux α, and the introduction of properly modified twist fields, whose two-point function directly gives the scaling limit of the charged moments. With the second method, the diagonalisation in replica space maps the problem to the computation of a partition function on a cut plane, that can be written exactly in terms of the solutions of non-linear differential equations of the Painlevé V type. Within this approach, we also derive an asymptotic expansion for the short and long distance behaviour of the charged moments. Finally, the Fourier transform provides the desired symmetry resolved entropies: at the leading order, they satisfy entanglement equipartition and we identify the subleading terms that break it. Our analytical findings are tested against exact numerical calculations in lattice models.
Abstract In a recent paper we studied the entanglement content of zero-density excited states in complex free quantum field theories, focusing on the symmetry resolved entanglement entropy (SREE). By zero-density states we mean states consisting of a fixed, finite number of excitations above the ground state in an infinite-volume system. The SREE is defined for theories that possess an internal symmetry and provides a measure of the contribution to the total entanglement of each symmetry sector. In our work, we showed that the ratio of Fourier-transforms of the SREEs (i.e. the ratio of charged moments) takes a very simple and universal form for these states, which depends only on the number, statistics and symmetry charge of the excitations as well as the relative size of the entanglement region with respect to the whole system’s size. In this paper we provide numerical evidence for our formulae by computing functions of the charged moments in two free lattice theories: a 1D Fermi gas and a complex harmonic chain. We also extend our results in two directions: by showing that they apply also to excited states of interacting theories (i.e. magnon states) and by developing a higher dimensional generalisation of the branch point twist field picture, leading to results in (interacting) higher-dimensional models.