Postion-momentum duality in the entanglement spectrum of free fermions

Mohammad Pouranvari

Ching Hua Lee, Peng Ye, Xiao-Liang Qi

We propose an exact equivalence between the entanglement spectra of two completely different free-fermion systems at zero temperature. This equivalence follows from a position-momentum duality where the physical roles of the occupied band and real space projectors are exchanged. We examine the physical consequences of this duality in multi-band models and as an example also physically motivate the equivalence of the entanglement spectrum of a real space partitioned two-band topological insulator with that of a bilayer Fermi gas with an interlayer partition. This duality has an interesting relation with the Wannier Spectrum in the high-temperature limit and can also be extended to other basis-independent physical quantities like particle-number fluctuations.

Matthew Headrick, Albion Lawrence, Matthew M. Roberts

Entanglement (Rényi) entropies of spatial regions are a useful tool for characterizing the ground states of quantum field theories. In this paper we investigate the extent to which these are universal quantities for a given theory, and to which they distinguish different theories, by comparing the entanglement spectra of the massless Dirac fermion and the compact free boson in two dimensions. We show that the calculation of Rényi entropies via the replica trick for any orbifold theory includes a sum over orbifold twists on all cycles. In a modular-invariant theory of fermions, this amounts to a sum over spin structures. The result is that the Rényi entropies respect the standard Bose–Fermi duality. Next, we investigate the entanglement spectrum for the Dirac fermion without a sum over spin structures, and for the compact boson at the self-dual radius. These are not equivalent theories; nonetheless, we find that (1) their second Rényi entropies agree for any number of intervals, (2) their full entanglement spectra agree for two intervals, and (3) the spectrum generically disagrees otherwise. These results follow from the equality of the partition functions of the two theories on any Riemann surface with imaginary period matrix. We also exhibit a map between the operators of the theories that preserves scaling dimensions (but not spins), as well as OPEs and correlators of operators placed on the real line. All of these coincidences can be traced to the fact that the momentum lattice for the bosonized fermion is related to that of the self-dual boson by a 45° rotation that mixes left- and right-movers.

Ting-Chen Leo Hsu, Michael B. McDermott, Mark Van Raamsdonk B

Po-Yao Chang, Xueda Wen, Shinsei Ryu

José A. Carrasco, Federico Finkel, Artemio González-López +1 more

The analysis of the entanglement entropy of a subsystem of a one-dimensional quantum system is a powerful tool for unravelling its critical nature. For instance, the scaling behaviour of the entanglement entropy determines the central charge of the associated Virasoro algebra. For a free fermion system, the entanglement entropy depends essentially on two sets, namely the set A of sites of the subsystem considered and the set K of excited momentum modes. In this work we make use of a general duality principle establishing the invariance of the entanglement entropy under exchange of the sets A and K to tackle complex problems by studying their dual counterparts. The duality principle is also a key ingredient in the formulation of a novel conjecture for the asymptotic behavior of the entanglement entropy of a free fermion system in the general case in which both sets A and K consist of an arbitrary number of blocks. We have verified that this conjecture reproduces the numerical results with excellent precision for all the configurations analyzed. We have also applied the conjecture to deduce several asymptotic formulas for the mutual and r-partite information generalizing the known ones for the single block case.