We review rigorous results concerning the Area Law for the entanglement entropy of free fermions whose one-body Hamiltonian is an ergodic Schrödinger operator with a strongly localised pure point spectrum. Particular attention is paid to operators with deterministic potentials (quasi-periodic ones and those generated by subshifts of finite type). Our approach relies on reducing the problem to obtaining exponential estimates for the eigenfunction correlator. This provides an effective route from localisation to the Area Law and allows for the identification of additional spectral estimates that need to be proven for various classes of ergodic operators. We realise this approach by using various localisation techniques, including dynamical localisation and the uniformly localised eigenfunction property for bounded and unbounded ergodic operators (e.g. the Maryland model), as well as a new method for obtaining the corresponding exponential bounds for Schrödinger operators generated by subshifts of finite type.
We review rigorous results concerning the Area Law for the entanglement entropy of free fermions whose one-body Hamiltonian is an ergodic Schrödinger operator with a strongly localised pure point spectrum. Particular attention is paid to operators with deterministic potentials (quasi-periodic ones and those generated by subshifts of finite type). Our approach relies on reducing the problem to obtaining exponential estimates for the eigenfunction correlator. This provides an effective route from localisation to the Area Law and allows for the identification of additional spectral estimates that need to be proven for various classes of ergodic operators. We realise this approach by using various localisation techniques, including dynamical localisation and the uniformly localised eigenfunction property for bounded and unbounded ergodic operators (e.g. the Maryland model), as well as a new method for obtaining the corresponding exponential bounds for Schrödinger operators generated by subshifts of finite type.
The paper deals with the asymptotic behavior of a widely used correlation characteristic in large quantum systems. The correlation is quantum entanglement, the characteristic is entanglement entropy, and the system is an ideal gas of lattice fermions. If the one-body Hamiltonian of fermions is an ergodic finite difference operator with an exponentially decaying spectral projection, then the large-block form of the entanglement entropy is the so-called area law. However, the only class of one-body Hamiltonians for which this spectral condition was verified consists of discrete Schrödinger operators with random potential. In this paper, we prove the area law for several classes of Schrödinger operators whose potentials are ergodic but not random. We begin with quasiperiodic and limit-periodic operators and then move to a highly non-trivial case of potentials generated by subshifts of finite type. These arose in the theory of dynamical systems when studying chaotic phenomena. The corresponding asymptotic study requires involved spectral analysis, which therefore constitutes the bulk of the paper. Specifically, we prove uniform localisation of the eigenfunctions for the Maryland model and exponential decay of the eigenfunction correlator for various models. We believe these properties are of significant independent interest.
In many-body systems the extent and range of spatial quantum correlations induced by entanglement provide a great deal of information about several qualitative physical properties. One way of studying this information is to examine the scaling behaviour of the ground state entanglement entropy with respect to a scaled version of a distinguished spatial subregion. In various systems the entanglement entropy grows proportionally to the surface area of the subregion which is referred to as an area law. In this thesis we examine the connection between the scaling behaviour of the entanglement entropy and many-body localisation. In recent years it was show that a number of systems, which are known to be in the localised phase, exhibit area laws of the entanglement entropy. It is commonly expected that the entanglement entropies of delocalised ground states do not satisfy area laws, though not many examples of different scaling behaviours have been shown, yet. The aim of this thesis is to provide further examples of violations of area laws in the context of delocalised systems. In three different models we show that the entanglement entropy of the ground states grows at least like a logarithmically enhanced area law. The first part of this thesis, based on joint work with P. Müller and L. Pastur [MPS20], considers the random dimer model. Even though this non-interacting, one-dimensional model is spectrally localised, there exist critical points in its spectrum at which the localisation length diverges. We consider the ground state corresponding to a Fermi energy positioned at one of these critical energies. In the case of small disorder we show a logarithmic lower bound to the expectation of the entanglement entropy. Moreover, we proof a logarithmic lower bound to the finite-volume entanglement en- tropy at these critical points for any disorder strength. In the second part of this thesis, which is based on joint work with P. Müller [MS20], we consider a multi-dimensional continuum Schrödinger operator, which is given by a perturbation of a negative Laplacian by a compactly supported, bounded potential. We establish both an upper and a lower bound to the entanglement entropy corresponding to a positive Fermi energy. These bounds prove that the scaling behaviour of the entanglement entropy is a logarithmically enhanced area law. This is the same scaling behaviour as the one occurring in the case of free fermions, one of the few delocalised systems for which an asymptotic expansion of the entanglement entropy is known. Finally, in the third and last part, based on joint work with C. Fischbacher [FS20], we consider the finite XXZ spin chain with periodic boundary conditions in the Ising phase. We show that for each eigenvalue in the droplet band there exists at least one eigenvector such that the corresponding entanglement entropy grows at least logarithmically, provided the anisotropy parameter ∆ is sufficiently large. In addition, we show a Combes–Thomas estimate for this model, which may be of independent interest.
We study theoretically and numerically the entanglement entropy of the d-dimensional free fermions whose one-body Hamiltonian is the Anderson model. Using the basic facts of the exponential Anderson localization, we show first that the disorder averaged entanglement entropy $⟨{S}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}}⟩$ of the d dimension cube $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$ of side length l admits the area law scaling $⟨{S}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}}⟩\ensuremath{\sim}{l}^{(d\ensuremath{-}1)},l\ensuremath{\gg}1$, even in the gapless case, thereby manifesting the area law in the mean for our model. For d=1 and $l\ensuremath{\gg}1$ we obtain then asymptotic bounds for the entanglement entropy of typical realizations of disorder and use them to show that the entanglement entropy is not self-averaging, i.e., has nonvanishing random fluctuations even if $l\ensuremath{\gg}1$.
We consider the isotropic or anisotropic XY spin chain in the presence of a transversal random magnetic field, with parameters given by random variables. It is shown that eigenfunction correlator localization of the corresponding effective one-particle Hamiltonian implies a uniform area law bound in expectation for the bipartite entanglement entropy of all eigenstates of the XY chain, i.e., a form of many-body localization at all energies. Here, entanglement with respect to arbitrary connected subchains of the chain can be considered. Applications where the required eigenfunction correlator bounds are known include the isotropic XY chain in random field as well as the anisotropic chain in strong or strongly disordered random field.
Abstract We study the entanglement properties of non-Hermitian free fermionic models with translation symmetry using the correlation matrix technique. Our results show that the entanglement entropy has a logarithmic correction to the area law in both one-dimensional and two-dimensional systems. For any one-dimensional one-band system, we prove that each Fermi point of the system contributes exactly 1/2 to the coefficient c of the logarithmic correction. Moreover, this relation between c and Fermi point is verified for more general one-dimensional and two-dimensional cases by numerical calculations and finite-size scaling analysis. In addition, we also study the single-particle and density–density correlation functions.
Physical interactions in quantum many-body systems are typically local: Individual constituents interact mainly with their few nearest neighbors. This locality of interactions is inherited by a decay of correlation functions, but also reflected by scaling laws of a quite profound quantity: the entanglement entropy of ground states. This entropy of the reduced state of a subregion often merely grows like the boundary area of the subregion, and not like its volume, in sharp contrast with an expected extensive behavior. Such ``area laws'' for the entanglement entropy and related quantities have received considerable attention in recent years. They emerge in several seemingly unrelated fields, in the context of black hole physics, quantum information science, and quantum many-body physics where they have important implications on the numerical simulation of lattice models. In this Colloquium the current status of area laws in these fields is reviewed. Center stage is taken by rigorous results on lattice models in one and higher spatial dimensions. The differences and similarities between bosonic and fermionic models are stressed, area laws are related to the velocity of information propagation in quantum lattice models, and disordered systems, nonequilibrium situations, and topological entanglement entropies are discussed. These questions are considered in classical and quantum systems, in their ground and thermal states, for a variety of correlation measures. A significant proportion is devoted to the clear and quantitative connection between the entanglement content of states and the possibility of their efficient numerical simulation. Matrix-product states, higher-dimensional analogs, and variational sets from entanglement renormalization are also discussed and the paper is concluded by highlighting the implications of area laws on quantifying the effective degrees of freedom that need to be considered in simulations of quantum states.