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Entanglement and confinement in coupled quantum systems

Fabien Alet

Published Jul 4, 2023• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study some general properties of coupled quantum systems. We consider simple interactions between two copies of identical Hamiltonians such as the SYK model, Pauli spin chains with random magnetic field and harmonic oscillators. Such couplings make the ground states close to the thermofield double states of the uncoupled Hamiltonians. For the coupled SYK model, we push the numerical computation further towards the thermodynamic limit so that an extrapolation in the size of the system is possible. We find good agreement between the extrapolated numerical result and the analytic result in the large-q limit. We also consider the coupled gauged matrix model and vector model, and argue that the deconfinement is associated with the loss of the entanglement, similarly to the previous observation for the coupled SYK model. The understanding of the microscopic mechanism of the confinement/deconfinement transition enables us to estimate the quantum entanglement precisely, and backs up the dual gravity interpretation which relates the deconfinement to the disappearance of the wormhole. Our results demonstrate the importance of the entanglement between the color degrees of freedom in the emergence of the bulk geometry from quantum field theory via holography.

DOI
10.1007/jhep02%282021%29034

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We study some general properties of coupled quantum systems. We consider simple interactions between two copies of identical Hamiltonians such as the SYK model, Pauli spin chains with random magnetic field and harmonic oscillators. Such couplings make the ground states close to the thermofield double states of the uncoupled Hamiltonians. For the coupled SYK model, we push the numerical computation further towards the thermodynamic limit so that an extrapolation in the size of the system is possible. We find good agreement between the extrapolated numerical result and the analytic result in the large-q limit. We also consider the coupled gauged matrix model and vector model, and argue that the deconfinement is associated with the loss of the entanglement, similarly to the previous observation for the coupled SYK model. The understanding of the microscopic mechanism of the confinement/deconfinement transition enables us to estimate the quantum entanglement precisely, and backs up the dual gravity interpretation which relates the deconfinement to the disappearance of the wormhole. Our results demonstrate the importance of the entanglement between the color degrees of freedom in the emergence of the bulk geometry from quantum field theory via holography.
Abstract We study some general properties of coupled quantum systems. We consider simple interactions between two copies of identical Hamiltonians such as the SYK model, Pauli spin chains with random magnetic field and harmonic oscillators. Such couplings make the ground states close to the thermofield double states of the uncoupled Hamiltonians. For the coupled SYK model, we push the numerical computation further towards the thermodynamic limit so that an extrapolation in the size of the system is possible. We find good agreement between the extrapolated numerical result and the analytic result in the large-qlimit. We also consider the coupled gauged matrix model and vector model, and argue that the deconfinement is associated with the loss of the entanglement, similarly to the previous observation for the coupled SYK model. The understanding of the microscopic mechanism of the confinement/deconfinement transition enables us to estimate the quantum entanglement precisely, and backs up the dual gravity interpretation which relates the deconfinement to the disappearance of the wormhole. Our results demonstrate the importance of the entanglement between the color degrees of freedom in the emergence of the bulk geometry from quantum field theory via holography.
Abstract In this paper, we study the entanglement entropy between two SYK systems with bilinear coupling. We use the replica trick to calculate the entanglement entropy in the ground state. In parallel, we calculate the entanglement entropy through the Ryu-Takayanagi formula in gravity. For the ground state that is dual to an eternal traversable wormhole in AdS2, the bulk quantum correction to the entanglement entropy is of the same order as the minimal surface area. The ground state of the coupled system is close to a thermofield double state with particular temperature and they have the same entanglement entropy. From the gravity point of view, we explain why the two states have the same entanglement entropy. We also study a case with time-dependent coupling, which involves finding the quantum extremal surface in the bulk.
Entanglement is one of the most important concepts in quantum physics. We review recent progress in understanding the quantum entanglement in many-body systems using large- N solvable models: the Sachdev—Ye—Kitaev (SYK) model and its generalizations. We present the study of entanglement entropy in the original SYK model using three different approaches: the exact diagonalization, the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, and the path-integral representation. For coupled SYK models, the entanglement entropy shows linear growth and saturation at the thermal value. The saturation is related to replica wormholes in gravity. Finally, we consider the steady-state entanglement entropy of quantum many-body systems under repeated measurements. The traditional symmetry breaking in the enlarged replica space leads to the measurement-induced entanglement phase transition.
Abstract We study the entanglement dynamics of thermofield double (TFD) states in integrable spin chains and quantum field theories. We show that, for a natural choice of the Hamiltonian eigenbasis, the TFD evolution may be interpreted as a quantum quench from an initial state which is low-entangled in the real-space representation and displays a simple quasiparticle structure. Based on a semiclassical picture analogous to the one developed for standard quantum quenches, we conjecture a formula for the entanglement dynamics, which is valid for both discrete and continuous integrable field theories, and expected to be exact in the scaling limit of large space and time scales. We test our conjecture in two prototypical examples of integrable spin chains, where numerical tests are possible. First, in the XY-model, we compare our predictions with exact results obtained by mapping the system to free fermions, finding excellent agreement. Second, we test our conjecture in the interacting XXZ Heisenberg model, against numerical iTEBD calculations. For the latter, we generally find good agreement, although, for some range of the system parameters and within the accessible simulation times, some small discrepancies are visible, which we attribute to finite-time effects.
Recent work has shown that coupling two identical Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models can realize a phase of matter that is holographically dual to an eternal traversable wormhole.This phase supports revival oscillations between two quantum chaotic systems that can be interpreted as information traversing the wormhole.Here we generalize these ideas to a pair of coupled SYK models with complex fermions that respect a global U(1) charge symmetry.Such models show richer behavior than conventional SYK models with Majorana fermions and may be easier to realize experimentally.We consider two different couplings, namely, tunneling and charge-conserving two-body interactions, and obtain the corresponding phase diagram using a combination of numerical and analytical techniques.At low temperature, we find a charge-neutral gapped phase that supports revival oscillations, with a ground state close to the thermofield double, which we argue is dual to a traversable wormhole.We also find two different gapless non-Fermi liquid phases with tunable charge density which we interpret as dual to a "large" and "small" charged black hole.The gapped and gapless phases are separated by a first-order phase transition of the Hawking-Page type.Finally, we discuss an SU(2)-symmetric limit of our model that is closely related to proposed realizations of SYK physics with spinful fermions in graphene, and explain its relevance for future experiments on this system.
Entanglement, one of the most intriguing features of quantum theory and a main resource in quantum information science, is expected to play a crucial role also in the study of quantum phase transitions, where it is responsible for the appearance of long-range correlations. We investigate, through a microscopic calculation, the scaling properties of entanglement in spin chain systems, both near and at a quantum critical point. Our results establish a precise connection between concepts of quantum information, condensed matter physics, and quantum field theory, by showing that the behavior of critical entanglement in spin systems is analogous to that of entropy in conformal field theories. We explore some of the implications of this connection.