We present an exact solution for entanglement entropy for the real-time dynamics following a quench from a thermal pure quantum (TPQ) state in a free-fermion system. In contrast to the usual linear growth and saturation behavior, the entanglement entropy exhibits a characteristic double-plateau structure. We establish this behavior through three complementary approaches: an exact conformal field theory calculation on the Klein bottle, finite-size Gaussian-state simulations, and a quasiparticle picture that becomes quantitatively accurate in the scaling regime.
We present an exact solution for entanglement entropy for the real-time dynamics following a quench from a thermal pure quantum (TPQ) state in a free-fermion system. In contrast to the usual linear growth and saturation behavior, the entanglement entropy exhibits a characteristic double-plateau structure. We establish this behavior through three complementary approaches: an exact conformal field theory calculation on the Klein bottle, finite-size Gaussian-state simulations, and a quasiparticle picture that becomes quantitatively accurate in the scaling regime.
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). We point out two physically relevant effects that should be easily observed in atomic experiments: a delay time for the onset of Sn(q) which grows linearly with $|\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}q|$ (the difference between the charge q and its mean value) and an effective equipartition when $|\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}q|$ is much smaller than the subsystem size.
We study the time evolution of the R\'enyi entanglement entropies following a quantum quench in a two-dimensional (2D) free fermion system. By employing dimensional reduction, we effectively transform the 2D problem into decoupled chains, a technique applicable when the system exhibits translational invariance in one direction. Various initial configurations are examined, revealing that the behavior of entanglement entropies can often be explained by adapting the one-dimensional quasiparticle picture. However, intriguingly, for specific initial states the entanglement entropy saturates to a finite value without the reduced density matrix converging to a stationary state. We discuss the conditions necessary for a stationary state to exist and delve into the necessary modifications to the quasiparticle picture when such a state is absent.
Abstract The effect of unstable quasiparticles in the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of certain integrable systems has been the subject of several recent studies. In this paper we focus on the stationary value of the entanglement entropy density, its growth rate, and related functions, after a quantum quench. We consider several quenches, each of which is characterised by a corresponding squeezed coherent state. In the quench action approach, the coherent state amplitudes K(θ) become input data that fully characterise the large-time stationary state, thus also the corresponding Yang-Yang entropy. We find that, as function of the mass of the unstable particle, the entropy growth rate has a global minimum signalling the depletion of entropy that accompanies a slowdown of stable quasiparticles at the threshold for the formation of an unstable excitation. We also observe a separation of scales governed by the interplay between the mass of the unstable particle and the quench parameter, separating a non-interacting regime described by free fermions from an interacting regime where the unstable particle is present. This separation of scales leads to a double-plateau structure of many functions, where the relative height of the plateaux is related to the ratio of central charges of the UV fixed points associated with the two regimes, in full agreement with conformal field theory predictions. The properties of several other functions of the entropy and its growth rate are also studied in detail, both for fixed quench parameter and varying unstable particle mass and viceversa.
Abstract We study the entanglement dynamics of thermofield double (TFD) states in integrable spin chains and quantum field theories. We show that, for a natural choice of the Hamiltonian eigenbasis, the TFD evolution may be interpreted as a quantum quench from an initial state which is low-entangled in the real-space representation and displays a simple quasiparticle structure. Based on a semiclassical picture analogous to the one developed for standard quantum quenches, we conjecture a formula for the entanglement dynamics, which is valid for both discrete and continuous integrable field theories, and expected to be exact in the scaling limit of large space and time scales. We test our conjecture in two prototypical examples of integrable spin chains, where numerical tests are possible. First, in the XY-model, we compare our predictions with exact results obtained by mapping the system to free fermions, finding excellent agreement. Second, we test our conjecture in the interacting XXZ Heisenberg model, against numerical iTEBD calculations. For the latter, we generally find good agreement, although, for some range of the system parameters and within the accessible simulation times, some small discrepancies are visible, which we attribute to finite-time effects.
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.
We investigate the crossover of the entanglement entropy toward its thermal value in nearly integrable systems. We employ equations-of-motion techniques to study the entanglement dynamics in a lattice model of weakly interacting spinless fermions after a quantum quench. For weak enough interactions we observe a two-step relaxation of the entanglement entropies of finite subsystems. Initially, the entropies follow a nearly integrable evolution, approaching the value predicted by the generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE) of the unperturbed model. Then, they start a slow drift toward the thermal stationary value described by a standard Gibbs ensemble (GE). While the initial relaxation to the GGE is independent of the interaction, the slow drift from GGE to GE values happens on timescales proportional to the inverse interaction squared. For asymptotically large times and subsystem sizes the dynamics of the entropies can be predicted using a modified quasiparticle picture that keeps track of the evolution of the fermionic occupations caused by the integrability breaking. This picture gives a quantitative description of the results as long as the integrability-breaking timescale is much larger than the one associated with the (quasi)saturation to the GGE. In the opposite limit, the quasiparticle picture still provides the correct late-time behavior, but it underestimates the initial slope of the entanglement entropy.