In this paper, we consider two examples of an entanglement in two-qubit systems and an example of entanglement in quantum field theory (QFT). In the beginning, we study the entanglement of two spin states by a magnetic field. A nonzero entanglement appears for interacting spins. When the coupling between the spins is constant, we study the entanglement by several types of time-dependent magnetic fields. In the case of a constant difference between [Formula: see text] components of magnetic fields acting on each spin, we find several time-dependent coupling functions [Formula: see text] that also allow us to analyze analytically and numerically the entanglement measure. Considering two photons moving in an electron medium, we demonstrate that they can be entangled in a controlled way by applying an external magnetic field. The magnetic field affecting electrons of the medium affects photons and, thus, causes an entanglement of the photon beams. The third example is related to the effect of production of electron–positron pairs from the vacuum by a strong external electric field. Here, we have used a general nonperturbative expression for the density operator of the system under consideration. Applying a reduction procedure to this density operator, we construct mixed states of electron and positron subsystems. Calculating the von Neumann entropy of such states, we obtain the loss of information due to the reduction and, at the same time, the entanglement measure of electron and positron subsystems. This entanglement can be considered as an example of an entanglement in QFT.
In this paper, we consider two examples of an entanglement in two-qubit systems and an example of entanglement in quantum field theory (QFT). In the beginning, we study the entanglement of two spin states by a magnetic field. A nonzero entanglement appears for interacting spins. When the coupling between the spins is constant, we study the entanglement by several types of time-dependent magnetic fields. In the case of a constant difference between [Formula: see text] components of magnetic fields acting on each spin, we find several time-dependent coupling functions [Formula: see text] that also allow us to analyze analytically and numerically the entanglement measure. Considering two photons moving in an electron medium, we demonstrate that they can be entangled in a controlled way by applying an external magnetic field. The magnetic field affecting electrons of the medium affects photons and, thus, causes an entanglement of the photon beams. The third example is related to the effect of production of electron–positron pairs from the vacuum by a strong external electric field. Here, we have used a general nonperturbative expression for the density operator of the system under consideration. Applying a reduction procedure to this density operator, we construct mixed states of electron and positron subsystems. Calculating the von Neumann entropy of such states, we obtain the loss of information due to the reduction and, at the same time, the entanglement measure of electron and positron subsystems. This entanglement can be considered as an example of an entanglement in QFT.
We study the possibility of affecting the entanglement in a two-qubit system consisting of two photons with different fixed frequencies but with two arbitrary linear polarizations, moving in the same direction, with the help of an applied external magnetic field. The interaction between the magnetic field and the photons in our model is achieved through intermediate electrons that interact both with the photons and the magnetic field. The possibility of an exact theoretical analysis of this scheme is based on well-known exact solutions that describe the interaction of an electron subjected to an external magnetic field (or a medium of electrons not interacting with each other) with a quantized field of two photons. We adapt these exact solutions to the case under consideration. Using explicit wave functions for the resulting electromagnetic field, we calculate the entanglement measures (the information and the Schmidt ones) of the photon beam as functions of the applied magnetic field and the parameters of the electron medium.
Entanglement is studied in the framework of Dyson's S-matrix theory in relativistic quantum field theory, which leads to a natural definition of entangled states of a particle-antiparticle pair and the spin operator from a Noether current. As an explicit example, the decay of a massive pseudo-scalar particle into a pair of electron and positron is analyzed. Two spin operators are extracted from the Noether current. The Wigner spin operator characterizes spin states at the rest frame of each fermion and, although not measurable in the laboratory, gives rise to a straightforward generalization of low-energy analysis of entanglement to the ultrarelativistic domain. In contrast, if one adopts a (modified) Dirac spin operator, the entanglement measured by spin correlation becomes maximal near the threshold of the decay, while the entanglement is replaced by the classical correlation for the ultrarelativistic electron-positron pair by analogy to the case of neutrinos, for which a hidden-variables type of description is possible. Chiral symmetry differentiates the spin angular momentum and the magnetic moment. The use of weak interaction that can measure helicity is suggested in the analysis of entanglement at high energies instead of a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, which is useless for the electron. A difference between the electron spin at high energies and the photon linear polarization is also noted. The Standard Model can describe all of the observable properties of leptons.
Entanglement of spins is analyzed for two electrons extracted from a mixed many-electron state by projecting onto the two-electron subspace. The concurrence formulae are expressed in a compact form for states with a well-defined square of the total spin projection. As an example, the thermal entanglement for a qubit pair with an anisotropic Heisenberg and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in an inhomogeneous magnetic field is given analytically. Remarkably, the concurrence of a pair of electrons with antiparallel spins and in a delocalised orbital state is given by the scalar product of the state with its spin-flipped state and not with the time-reversed state.
This thesis studies four related projects: tuning entanglement for spin systems, de-coherence and dynamics of entanglement, entanglement as measure of electron correlation in chemical systems and quantum algorithms to search for global minima. Chapter 1 presents a general introduction and the motivation for these research areas. It is composed of a brief review of the history and the future of modern computers and the state-of-art areas in quantum computation and information. Chapter 2 will be dedicated to introducing the concept of entanglement, its importance, quantification and applications. Then in Chapter 3, the properties of a set of localized spins, which are coupled to an external magnetic field through exchange interaction, are investigated. It is shown that entanglement can be controlled and tuned by varying the anisotropy parameter in the Hamiltonian, and by introducing impurities into the systems. Furthermore, the scheme for amplifying the internal entanglement by external interaction is also studied. In Chapter 4, the applications of the entanglement concept for de-coherence and dynamics is considered. In particular, the dynamics of entanglement for one-dimensional spin systems, which are coupled through nearest neighbor exchange interaction and subject to an external time-dependent magnetic field, is investigated. Using the two-site density matrix, the time-dependent entanglement of formation between nearest neighbor qubits is calculated. It is found that the entanglement can be localized between nearest neighbor qubits for certain values of the external time-dependent magnetic field. In quantum chemistry calculations, the correlation energy is defined as the difference between the Hartree-Fock limit energy and the exact solution of the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation. In Chapter 5, the application of entanglement as an alternative measure of the electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations is proposed. Entanglement is directly observable and it is one of the most striking properties of quantum mechanics. Finally, Chapter 6 presents the latest research results in developing quantum algorithms for searching the global minima. In this Chapter, the modified Grover’s quantum algorithm using modest numbers of quantum bits to find a global minimum for real problems is demonstrated.
One of the most important predictions of quantum mechanics is the existence of quantum entanglement. Since the inception of quantum theory, the study of entanglement has become ubiquitous in several branches of physics, from high energy to condensed matter physics and quantum information. To this avail, different measures of entanglement in quantum systems have been introduced. The most successful ones are the von Neumann and the Rényi entanglement entropies, which have been heavily studied both in lattice models and in quantum field theories (QFTs). A different, more complete characterization of entanglement is provided by the entanglement (or modular) Hamiltonian, defined as the logarithm of the reduced density matrix. One of the key property of this operator is that, under generic conditions, in 1+1-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) presents a local and few-body structure. Beyond just being of theoretical interest, this property has been recently used to efficiently construct the ground state of spin chains in quantum simulators. A recently introduced generalisation of the entanglement Hamiltonian is the negativity Hamiltonian, a non-Hermitian operator which is more useful for mixed states and tripartite entanglement. In this thesis we study these quantifications in many-body quantum systems and in QFTs. In the first part of the thesis, we focus on fermionic systems at equilibrium, and we obtain analytical expressions for the entanglement and the negativity Hamiltonians in the massless Dirac fermion QFT, both in presence of boundaries and at finite temperature. We compare these predictions in the continuum QFT with numerical calculations on the lattice, showing that a proper comparison requires a non-trivial continuum limit of the lattice expression, which we detail. We also investigate a lattice realisation of a non-unitary CFT, the bc-ghost theory, showing that the entanglement Hamiltonian presents an additional term with respect to the unitary case. In the second part, we study the entanglement entropies in an integrable QFT, the massless renormalisation group flow from the tricritical to the critical Ising CFT, demonstrating that the entropy is monotonically decreasing under the renormalisation group flow, as expected from the entropic c-theorem. In the third part we consider out-of-equilibrium problems. We study the melting of a domain wall configuration, computing analytically the entanglement Hamiltonian and showing that the insertion of a defect dramatically modifies the entanglement properties, changing the growth of the entropies from logarithmic to linear in time. Finally, we study generic quantum quenches in free fermionic theories, using the celebrated quasiparticle picture to obtain a prediction for the evolution of the entanglement Hamiltonian during the quench.
We study statistical properties of states of massive quantized charged Dirac and Klein-Gordon fields interacting with a background that violates the vacuum stability, first in general terms and then for a special electromagnetic background. As a starting point, we use a nonperturbative expression for the density operators of such fields derived by Gavrilov et al. [Gavrilov, Gitman, and Tomazelli, Nucl. Phys. B 795, 645 (2008)]. We construct the reduced density operators for electron and positron subsystems and discuss a decoherence that may occur in the course of the evolution due to an intermediate measurement. By calculating the entropy we study the loss of the information in QED states due to partial reductions and a possible decoherence. We consider the so-called T-constant external electric field as an external background. This exactly solvable example allows us to calculate explicitly all statistical properties of various quantum states of the massive charged fields under consideration.