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Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Entanglement in Quantum Harmonic Chains

Noel Klingler

Published Jan 1, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Harmonic chains are used as a model in quantum information theory for ion traps and simple solid state systems. Entanglement is a quantum effect in which observations made on one object instantaneously affect measurement outcomes on the other. This study investigates interparticle entanglement in finite chains of coupled harmonic oscillators as a function of the vibrational modes, mode excitations, and bipartition of oscillators. The methods used and results extend previous work for the Gaussian ground state to excited states. Entanglement is analyzed by calculating the purity of the reduced density matrix of the combined wavefunctions of the oscillators in the chain, tracing over subensembles. Analytic and numerical results for a varying effective spring constants between the particles and number of particles in the chain are presented. Interesting correlations between the symmetries of the vibrational modes and their excitations, and the symmetries of the partitions were discovered. Results show that higher excitation numbers result in higher entanglement. Adding energy to the modes will never decrease entanglement, however, the relationship between energy and entanglement is not simple. Different combinations of mode energy excitations will produce the same entanglement, even if the total energy of the system differs. Patterns indicate that the combination of symmetry in mode shapes and partition determines excitation number purity equivalence classes.

DOI
10.57912/23832591

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Harmonic chains are used as a model in quantum information theory for ion traps and simple solid state systems. Entanglement is a quantum effect in which observations made on one object instantaneously affect measurement outcomes on the other. This study investigates interparticle entanglement in finite chains of coupled harmonic oscillators as a function of the vibrational modes, mode excitations, and bipartition of oscillators. The methods used and results extend previous work for the Gaussian ground state to excited states. Entanglement is analyzed by calculating the purity of the reduced density matrix of the combined wavefunctions of the oscillators in the chain, tracing over subensembles. Analytic and numerical results for a varying effective spring constants between the particles and number of particles in the chain are presented. Interesting correlations between the symmetries of the vibrational modes and their excitations, and the symmetries of the partitions were discovered. Results show that higher excitation numbers result in higher entanglement. Adding energy to the modes will never decrease entanglement, however, the relationship between energy and entanglement is not simple. Different combinations of mode energy excitations will produce the same entanglement, even if the total energy of the system differs. Patterns indicate that the combination of symmetry in mode shapes and partition determines excitation number purity equivalence classes.
We investigate the quantum entanglement content of quasiparticle excitations in extended many-body systems. We show that such excitations give an additive contribution to the bipartite von Neumann and Rényi entanglement entropies that takes a simple, universal form. It is largely independent of the momenta and masses of the excitations and of the geometry, dimension, and connectedness of the entanglement region. The result has a natural quantum information theoretic interpretation as the entanglement of a state where each quasiparticle is associated with two qubits representing their presence within and without the entanglement region, taking into account quantum (in)distinguishability. This applies to any excited state composed of finite numbers of quasiparticles with finite de Broglie wavelengths or finite intrinsic correlation length. This includes particle excitations in massive quantum field theory and gapped lattice systems, and certain highly excited states in conformal field theory and gapless models. We derive this result analytically in one-dimensional massive bosonic and fermionic free field theories and for simple setups in higher dimensions. We provide numerical evidence for the harmonic chain and the two-dimensional harmonic lattice in all regimes where the conditions above apply. Finally, we provide supporting calculations for integrable spin chain models and other interacting cases without particle production. Our results point to new possibilities for creating entangled states using many-body quantum systems.
Quantum entanglement serves as a key phenomenon in understanding correlations in many-body systems, but analytical results remain scarce for coupled three-body oscillators. In this work, we address this gap by introducing a geometrical diagonalization approach that constrains Euler angles, thereby reducing the degrees of freedom in the entanglement analysis. It consists of deriving analytical expressions for linear entropy and purity under the bipartitions (x∣yz)(x|yz)(x∣yz), (y∣xz)(y|xz)(y∣xz), and (xy∣z)(xy|z)(xy∣z) using the Wigner function framework. Our results indicate that excitations in any oscillator basically enhance the redistribution of correlations across the system. The mixing angle θθθ governs entanglement intensity, ranging from separability to maximal correlation. Moreover, we reveal the symmetry relations, notably SLy[(n,m,l),θ]=SLz[(n,m,l),−θ]S_{Ly}[(n,m,l),θ]=S_{Lz}[(n,m,l),-θ]SLy​[(n,m,l),θ]=SLz​[(n,m,l),−θ] and an intrinsic symmetry within (x∣yz)(x|yz)(x∣yz). Hence, we clarify how excitation levels and mixing angles create and enhance entanglement in the three coupled harmonic oscillators.
This article investigates entanglement of the motional states of massive coupled oscillators. The specific realization of an idealized diatomic molecule in one-dimension is considered, but the techniques developed apply to any massive particles with two degrees of freedom and a quadratic Hamiltonian. We present two methods, one analytic and one approximate, to calculate the interatomic entanglement for Gaussian and non-Gaussian pure states as measured by the purity of the reduced density matrix. The cases of free and trapped molecules and hetero- and homonuclear molecules are treated. In general, when the trap frequency and the molecular frequency are very different, and when the atomic masses are equal, the atoms are highly-entangled for molecular coherent states and number states. Surprisingly, while the interatomic entanglement can be quite large even for molecular coherent states, the covariance of atomic position and momentum observables can be entirely explained by a classical model with appropriately chosen statistical uncertainty.
The quantum oscillator model plays a significant role in quantum optics and quantum information and has been one of the hot topics in related research fields. Inspired by the single-mode linear harmonic oscillator and the two-mode entangled state representation, we construct a two-mode coupled harmonic oscillator in this work. Different from the quantum transformation method used in previous literature, the entangled state representation is directly used in this work to solve its energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions easily. The energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of this two-mode coupled harmonic oscillator are continuous compared with those of the one-mode harmonic oscillator. Using the matrix theory of quantum operators, we derive the transformation and inverse transformation of the time evolution operator corresponding to the two-mode coupled harmonic oscillator. In addition, using the entangled state representation, the specific form of the time evolution of the two-mode vacuum state under the action of the oscillator is obtained. Through the analysis of quantum fidelity, it is found that the fidelity of the output quantum state decreases with the oscillator frequency increasing, and the fidelity eventually tends to zero with the increase of time. When analyzing the orthogonal squeezing properties of the output quantum state, this type of two-mode oscillator does not have the orthogonal squeezing effect, but it has a strong quantum dissipation effect instead. This conclusion is further verified by the quasi-probability distribution Q function of the quantum state phase space. Therefore, the two-mode coupled harmonic oscillator has a major reference value in quantum control such as quantum decoherence and quantum information transmission. Like the two-mode squeezed vacuum state, the photon distribution of the output quantum light field corresponding to the two-mode harmonic oscillator presents a super-Poisson distribution, and the photons exhibit a strong anti-bunching effect. Using the three-dimensional discrete plot of the photon number distribution, the super-Poisson distribution and quantum dissipation effect of the output quantum state are intuitively demonstrated. Finally, the SV, which is an entanglement criterion, is used to determine that the output quantum state has a high degree of entanglement. Further numerical analysis shows that the degree of entanglement increases with the action time and the oscillator frequency. In summary, the two-mode coupled harmonic oscillator constructed in this work can be used to prepare highly entangled quantum states through a complete quantum dissipation process. This provides theoretical support for experimental preparing quantum entangled states based on dissipative mechanisms.
The ground-state entanglement of a single particle of the N-harmonium system (i.e., a completely-integrable model of NNN particles where both the confinement and the two-particle interaction are harmonic) is shown to be analytically determined in terms of NNN and the relative interaction strength. For bosons, we compute the von Neumann entropy of the one-body reduced density matrix by using the corresponding natural occupation numbers. There exists a critical number NcN_cNc​ of particles so that below it, for positive values of the coupling constant, the entanglement grows when the number of particles is increasing; the opposite occurs for N>NcN > N_cN>Nc​. For fermions, we compute the one-body reduced density matrix for the closed-shell spinned case. In the strong coupling regime, the linear entropy of the system decreases when NNN is growing. For fixed NNN, the entanglement is found (a) to decrease (increase) for negatively (positively) increasing values of the coupling constant, and (b) to grow when the energy is increasing. Moreover, the spatial and spin contributions to the total entanglement are found to be of comparable size.
We investigate the lowest excitation modes of binary 39^{39}39K ultradilute droplets confined harmonically in one direction, which reduces the critical number of particles needed to sustain a self-bound state. Using the density functional built from first-principles quantum Monte Carlo calculations (QMC), which incorporates the effects of finite range interactions, we study the crossover of the oscillation modes from three to two dimensions. For weak squeezing, we observe the coupling between breathing and quadrupole modes, resulting from the breaking of spherical symmetry. Increasing the squeezing, the higher-frequency mode corresponding to three-dimensional breathing mode becomes unstable. For squeezings stronger and comparable to experiments, we analyze the dependence of the excitation modes on the droplet size for several interactions and show the reduction of the number of particles needed to sustain stable oscillations. The differences between the results obtained with the QMC functional and the extended Gross-Pitaevskii theory are increased with respect to the case of previously studied spherical droplets.