Abstract The entanglement theory in quantum systems with internal symmetries is rich due to the spontaneous creation of entangled pairs of charge/anti-charge particles at the entangling surface. We call these pair creation operators the bi-local intertwiners because of the role they play in the representation theory of the symmetry group. We define a generalized measure of entanglement entropy as a measure of information erased under restriction to a subspace of observables. We argue that the correct entanglement measure in the presence of charges is the sum of two terms; one measuring the entanglement of charge- neutral operators, and the other measuring the contribution of the bi-local intertwiners. Our expression is unambiguously defined in lattice models as well in quantum field theory (QFT). We use the Tomita-Takesaki modular theory to highlight the differences between QFT and lattice models, and discuss an extension of the algebra of QFT that leads to a factorization of the charged modes.
In the framework of Algebraic Quantum Field Theory, several operator algebraic notions of entanglement entropy can be associated to a couple of causally disjoint and distant spacetime regions
SA and
SB. In this work, we show that the mutual information is finite in any local QFT verifying a modular
p-nuclearity condition for some
0<p<1. A similar result is proved for another recently studied entanglement measure. Furthermore, if we assume conformal covariance then by comparison with other entanglement measures we can state that the mutual information satisfies lower bounds of area law type when the distance between
SA and
SB approaches to zero. As an application, in
1+1-dimensional integrable models with factorizing S-matrices, we study the asymptotic behaviour of different entanglement measures as the distance between two causally disjoint wedges diverges.
In this thesis, we study aspects of entanglement theory of quantum field theories from an algebraic point of view. The main motivation is to gain insights about the general structure of the entanglement in QFT, towards a definition of an entropic version of QFT. In the opposite direction, we are also interested in exploring any consequence of the entanglement in algebraic QFT. This may help us to reveal unknown features of QFT, with the final aim of finding a dynamical principle which allows us to construct non-trivial and rigorous models of QFT. The algebraic approach is the natural framework to define and study entanglement in QFT, and hence, to pose the above inquiries. After a self-contained review of algebraic QFT and quantum information theory in operator algebras, we focus on our results. We compute, in a mathematically rigorous way, exact solutions of entanglement measures and modular Hamiltonians for specific QFT models, using algebraic tools from modular theory of von Neumann algebras. These calculations show explicitly non-local features of modular Hamiltonians and help us to solve ambiguities that arise in other non-rigorous computations. We also study aspects of entanglement entropy in theories having superselection sectors coming from global symmetries. We follow the algebraic perspective of Doplicher, Haag, and Roberts. In this way, we find an entropic order parameter that "measures" the size of the symmetry group, which is made out of a difference of two mutual informations. Moreover, we identify the main operators that take account of such a difference, and we obtain a new quantum information quantity, the entropic certainty relation, involving algebras containing such operators. This certainty relation keeps an intrinsic connection with subfactor theory of von Neumann algebras.