In this thesis, the scaling behavior of entanglement is investigated in quantum systems with strongly fluctuating ground states. We relate the reduced density matrices of quadratic fermionic and bosonic models to their Green's function matrices in a unified way, and calculate exactly the scaling of the entanglement entropy of finite systems in an infinite universe. In these systems, we observe quantum phase transition by tuning the parameters of the Hamiltonian. Our study shows that although in one dimension there is a unique relation between the quantum phase transition and the scaling behavior of entanglement, this is not necessarily true in higher dimensions.
In this thesis, the scaling behavior of entanglement is investigated in quantum systems with strongly fluctuating ground states. We relate the reduced density matrices of quadratic fermionic and bosonic models to their Green's function matrices in a unified way, and calculate exactly the scaling of the entanglement entropy of finite systems in an infinite universe. In these systems, we observe quantum phase transition by tuning the parameters of the Hamiltonian. Our study shows that although in one dimension there is a unique relation between the quantum phase transition and the scaling behavior of entanglement, this is not necessarily true in higher dimensions.
We relate the reduced density matrices of quadratic fermionic and bosonic models to their Green's function matrices in a unified way and calculate the scaling of the entanglement entropy of finite systems in an infinite universe exactly. For critical fermionic two-dimensional (2D) systems at T=0, two regimes of scaling are identified: generically, we find a logarithmic correction to the area law with a prefactor dependence on the chemical potential that confirms earlier predictions based on the Widom conjecture. If, however, the Fermi surface of the critical system is zero-dimensional, then we find an area law with a sublogarithmic correction. For a critical bosonic 2D array of coupled oscillators at T=0, our results show that the entanglement entropy follows the area law without corrections.
The following thesis focuses on the scaling of entanglement entropy in lower dimensions and is divided into three main parts. Chapter 2 studies the thermal reduced density matrices in fermion and spin systems on ladders. Chapter 3 studies the many-body localization phase transition in a Rokhsar-Kivelson type wave function. Chapter 4 studies the subleading correction term of entanglement entropy in 2+1 dimensional scale invariant systems. Chapter 5 studies the bulk-boundary correspondence in 3 + 1 dimensional topological phases and its entanglement entropy. In chapter 2, we investigate the reduced density matrices for a model of free fermions on a two-leg ladder (gapped by the inter-chain tunneling operator) and in 1/2 spin systems on a ladder with a gapped ground state using exact solutions and several controlled approximations. We calculate the reduced density matrix and the entanglement entropy for a leg of the ladder (i.e. cut made between the chains). In the fermionic system we find the exact form of the reduced density matrix for one of the chains and determine the entanglement spectrum explicitly. Here we find that in the weak tunneling limit of the ladder the entanglement entropy of one chain of the gapped ladder has a simple and universal form dictated by conformal invariance. In the case of the spin system, we consider the strong coupling limit by using perturbation theory and get the reduced density matrix by the Schmidt decomposition. The entanglement entropies of a general gapped system of two coupled conformal field theories (in 1+1 dimensions) is discussed using the replica trick and scaling arguments. We show that 1) for a system with a bulk gap, the reduced density matrix has the form of a thermal density matrix, 2) the long-wavelength modes of one subsystem (a chain) of a gapped coupled system are always thermal, 3) the von Neumann entropy equals to the thermodynamic entropy of one chain, and 4) the bulk gap plays the role of effective temperature. In chapter 3, we construct a family of many-body wave functions to study the many-body localization phase transition. The wave functions have a Rokhsar-Kivelson form, in which the weight for the configurations are chosen from the Gibbs weights of a classical spin glass model, known as the Random Energy Model, multiplied by a random sign structure to represent a highly excited state. These wave functions show a phase transition into an MBL phase. In addition, we see three regimes of entanglement scaling with subsystem size: scaling with entanglement corresponding to an infinite temperature thermal phase, constant scaling, and a sub-extensive scaling between these limits. Near the phase transition point, the fluctuations of the Renyi entropies are non-Gaussian. We find that Renyi entropies with different Renyi index transition into the MBL phase at different points and have different scaling behavior, suggesting a multifractal behavior. In chapter 4, we study the universal scaling behavior of the entanglement entropy of critical theories in 2+1 dimensions. We specially consider two fermionic scale-invariant models, free massless Dirac fermions and a model of fermions with quadratic band touching, and numerically study the two-cylinder entanglement entropy of the models on the torus. We find that in both cases the entanglement entropy satisfies the area law and has the subleading term which is a scaling function of the aspect ratios of the cylindrical regions. We test the scaling of entanglement in both the free fermion models using three possible scaling functions for the subleading term derived from a) the quasi-one-dimensional conformal field theory, b) the bosonic quantum Lifshitz model, and c) the holographic AdS/CFT correspondence. For the later case we construct an analytic scaling function using holography, appropriate for critical theories with a gravitational dual description. We find that the subleading term in the fermionic models is well described, for a range of aspect ratios, by the scaling form derived from the quantum Lifshitz model as well as that derived using the AdS/CFT correspondence (in this case only for the Dirac model). For the case where the fermionic models are placed on a square torus we find the fit to the different scaling forms is in agreement to surprisingly high precision. In chapter 5, we discuss (2+1)-dimensional gapless surface theories of bulk (3+1)-dimensional topological phases, such as the BF theory at level K, and its generalization. In particular, we put these theories on a flat (2+1) dimensional torus T3 parameterized by its modular parameters, and compute the partition functions obeying various twisted boundary conditions. We show the partition functions are transformed into each other under SL(3, Z) modular transformations, and furthermore establish the bulk-boundary correspondence in (3+1) dimensions by matching the modular S and T matrices computed from the boundary field theories with those computed in the bulk. We propose the three-loop braiding statistics can be studied by constructing the modular S and T matrices from an appropriate boundary field theory. We also study the EE for 3 + 1- dimensional topological phase with or without three-loop braiding phase.
THESIS SUMMARYTEXT:This thesis is made of two parts. In the first one, the issue of entanglement in many body systems is addressed. The concept of entanglement and some of the recent progress on the study of entropy of entanglement in many body quantum systems are reviewed. Emphasis is placed on the scaling properties of entropy for one-dimensional models at quantum phase transitions. Then, we focus on the area-law scaling of the entanglement entropy. An explicit computation in arbitrary dimensions of the entanglement entropy of the ground state of a discretized scalar free field theory that shows the expected area law result is also presented. For this system, it is shown that area law scaling is a manifestation of a deeper reordering of the vacuum produced by majorization relations.To finish this first part, the issue of how simple can a quantum system be such as to give a highly entangled ground state is addressed. In particular, we propose a Hamiltonian of a XX model with a ground state whose entropy scales linearly with the size of the block. It provides a simple example of a one dimensional system of spin-1/2 particles with nearest neighbour interactions that violates area-law for the entanglement entropy.The second part of this thesis deals with the problem of simulating quantum mechanics for highly entangled systems. Two different approaches to this issue are considered. One consists of using ultra-cold atoms systems as quantum simulators. With this aim, some experimental techniques related to cold atoms that allow to simulate strongly correlated many body quantum systems are reviewed an explicit example of simulation is presented. In particular, we analyze how to achieve a Mott state of Laughlin wave functions in an optical lattice and study the consequences of considering anharmonic corrections to each single site potential expansion that were not taken into account until now.Finally, a different approach to simulate strongly correlated systems is considered: to use small quantum computers to simulate them. An explicit quantum algorithm that creates the Laughlin state for an arbitrary number of particles n in the case of falling fraction equal to one is presented. We further prove the optimality of the circuit using permutation theory arguments and we compute exactly how entanglement develops along the action of each gate. We also discuss its experimental feasibility decomposing the qudits and the gates in terms of qubits and two qubit-gates as well as the generalization to arbitrary falling fraction.KEYWORDS: Entanglement, Many body quantum systems, Quantum Information Condensed Matter, Cold atoms, Spin chains, Quantum simulator, Quantum computation.
We study quantum phase transitions involving fractional quantum Hall states using numerical calculations of entanglements and related quantities. We tune finite-size wave functions on spherical geometries by varying the interaction potential away from the Coulomb interaction. We uncover signatures of quantum phase transitions contained in the scaling behavior of the entropy of entanglement between two parts of the sphere. In addition to the entanglement entropy, we show that signatures of quantum phase transitions also appear in other aspects of the reduced density matrix of one part of the sphere.
The entanglement properties of correlated wave functions commonly employed in theories of strongly correlated many-body systems are studied. The variational treatment of the transverse Ising model within correlated-basis theory is reviewed, and existing calculations of the one- and two-body reduced density matrices are used to evaluate or estimate established measures of bipartite entanglement, including the Von Neumann entropy, the concurrence, and localizable entanglement, for square, cubic, and hypercubic lattice systems. The results discussed in relation to the findings of previous studies that explore the relationship of entanglement behaviors to quantum critical phenomena and quantum phase transitions. It is emphasized that Jastrow-correlated wave functions and their extensions contain multipartite entanglement to all orders.
Motivated by recent development of the concept of the disorder operator and its relation with entanglement entropy in bosonic systems, here we show the disorder operator successfully probes many aspects of quantum entanglement in fermionic many-body systems. From both analytical and numerical computations in free and interacting fermion systems in 1D and 2D, we find the disorder operator and the entanglement entropy exhibit similar universal scaling behavior, as a function of the boundary length of the subsystem, but with subtle yet important differences. In 1D they both follow the \log{L} log L scaling behavior with the coefficient determined by the Luttinger parameter for disorder operator, and the conformal central charge for entanglement entropy. In 2D they both show the universal L\log L L log L scaling behavior in free and interacting Fermi liquid states, with the coefficients depending on the geometry of the Fermi surfaces. However at a 2D quantum critical point with non-Fermi-liquid state, extra symmetry information is needed in the design of the disorder operator, so as to reveal the critical fluctuations as does the entanglement entropy. Our results demonstrate the fermion disorder operator can be used to probe quantum many-body entanglement related to global symmetry, and provide new tools to explore the still largely unknown territory of highly entangled fermion quantum matter in 2 or higher dimensions.