Partial transpose and entanglement negativity in fermionic systems

Jun Qi Fang, Xiao Yan Xu

Over the past two decades, the overlap matrix approach has been developed to compute quantum entanglement in free-fermion systems, particularly to calculate entanglement entropy and entanglement negativity. This method involves the use of partial trace and partial transpose operations within the overlap matrix framework. However, in previous studies, only the conventional partial transpose in fermionic systems has been considered, which does not account for fermionic anticommutation relations. Although the concept of a fermionic partial transpose was introduced by Shapourian et al. [Phys. Rev. B 95, 165101 (2017)], it has not yet been systematically incorporated into the overlap matrix framework. In this paper, we introduce the fermionic partial transpose into the overlap matrix approach, provide a systematic analysis of the validity of partial trace and partial transpose operations, and derive an explicit formula for calculating entanglement negativity in bipartite systems. Additionally, we numerically compute the logarithmic negativity of two lattice models to verify the Gioev-Klich-Widom scaling law. For tripartite geometries, we uncover limitations of the overlap matrix method and demonstrate that the previously reported logarithmic negativity result for a homogeneous one-dimensional chain in a disjoint interval geometry exceeds its theoretical upper bound.

Po-Yao Chang, Xueda Wen, Shinsei Ryu

Hassan Shapourian, Ken Shiozaki, Shinsei Ryu

Quantum systems are known to exhibit several types of exotic behavior beyond classical physics, including quantum entanglement, which describes a web of nonlocal correlations among the constituents of the system. Despite numerous advances in understanding and quantifying the bipartite entanglement entropy of a pure state, where the whole system is described by a wave function, less is understood about quantum entanglement of a mixed state, where the system is described by a density matrix. The partial transpose of the density matrix, in which one takes the transpose only for a subsystem, and its corresponding entanglement measure -- called the (logarithmic) negativity -- have been introduced as an effective probe for the quantum entanglement in bosonic mixed states. In this work, the authors present a scheme to compute an analog of the entanglement negativity in the fermionic mixed states using a partial time-reversal transformation. Various examples are investigated. In particular, it is shown that the partial time reversal is an intrinsically fermionic construction, in that it can capture the formation of the edge Majorana fermions, while the partial transpose obtained from the bosonic partial transpose through the Jordan-Wigner transformation fails.

Bei Zeng

Hernán Santos, J. E. Alvarellos, Javier Rodríguez-Laguna

Hassan Shapourian, Shinsei Ryu

We study quantum information aspects of the fermionic entanglement negativity recently introduced [H. Shapourian et al., Phys. Rev. B 95, 165101 (2017)] based on the fermionic partial transpose. In particular, we show that it is an entanglement monotone under the action of local quantum operations and classical communications, which preserves the local fermion-number parity, and satisfies other common properties expected for an entanglement measure of mixed states. We present fermionic analogs of tripartite entangled states such as $W$ and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states and compare the results of bosonic and fermionic partial transpose in various fermionic states, where we explain why the bosonic partial transpose fails in distinguishing separable states of fermions. Finally, we explore a set of entanglement quantities which distinguish different classes of entangled states of a system with two and three fermionic modes. In doing so, we prove that vanishing entanglement negativity is a necessary and sufficient condition for separability of $N\ensuremath{\ge}2$ fermionic modes with respect to the bipartition into one mode and the rest. We further conjecture that the entanglement negativity of inseparable states which mix local fermion-number parity is always nonvanishing.