No Arabic abstract
We formulate a new ``Wigner characteristics based method to calculate entanglement entropies of subsystems of Fermions using Keldysh field theory. This bypasses the requirements of working with complicated manifolds for calculating R{e}nyi entropies for many body systems. We provide an exact analytic formula for R{e}nyi and von-Neumann entanglement entropies of non-interacting open quantum systems, which are initialised in arbitrary Fock states. We use this formalism to look at entanglement entropies of momentum Fock states of one-dimensional Fermions. We show that the entanglement entropy of a Fock state can scale either logarithmically or linearly with subsystem size, depending on whether the number of discontinuities in the momentum distribution is smaller or larger than the subsystem size. This classification of states in terms number of blocks of occupied momenta allows us to analytically estimate the number of critical and non-critical Fock states for a particular subsystem size. We also use this formalism to describe entanglement dynamics of an open quantum system starting with a single domain wall at the center of the system. Using entanglement entropy and mutual information, we understand the dynamics in terms of coherent motion of the domain wall wavefronts, creation and annihilation of domain walls and incoherent exchange of particles with the bath.
We generalize techniques previously used to compute ground-state properties of one-dimensional noninteracting quantum gases to obtain exact results at finite temperature. We compute the order-n Renyi entanglement entropy to all orders in the fugacity in one, two, and three spatial dimensions. In all spatial dimensions, we provide closed-form expressions for its virial expansion up to next-to-leading order. In all of our results, we find explicit volume scaling in the high-temperature limit.
We develop the framework of classical Observational entropy, which is a mathematically rigorous and precise framework for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, explicitly defined in terms of a set of observables. Observational entropy can be seen as a generalization of Boltzmann entropy to systems with indeterminate initial conditions, and describes the knowledge achievable about the system by a macroscopic observer with limited measurement capabilities; it becomes Gibbs entropy in the limit of perfectly fine-grained measurements. This quantity, while previously mentioned in the literature, has been investigated in detail only in the quantum case. We describe this framework reasonably pedagogically, then show that in this framework, certain choices of coarse-graining lead to an entropy that is well-defined out of equilibrium, additive on independent systems, and that grows towards thermodynamic entropy as the system reaches equilibrium, even for systems that are genuinely isolated. Choosing certain macroscopic regions, this dynamical thermodynamic entropy measures how close these regions are to thermal equilibrium. We also show that in the given formalism, the correspondence between classical entropy (defined on classical phase space) and quantum entropy (defined on Hilbert space) becomes surprisingly direct and transparent, while manifesting differences stemming from non-commutativity of coarse-grainings and from non-existence of a direct classical analogue of quantum energy eigenstates.
We study the entanglement entropy of blocks of contiguous spins in non-periodic (quasi-periodic or more generally aperiodic) critical Heisenberg, XX and quantum Ising spin chains, e.g. in Fibonacci chains. For marginal and relevant aperiodic modulations, the entanglement entropy is found to be a logarithmic function of the block size with log-periodic oscillations. The effective central charge, c_eff, defined through the constant in front of the logarithm may depend on the ratio of couplings and can even exceed the corresponding value in the homogeneous system. In the strong modulation limit, the ground state is constructed by a renormalization group method and the limiting value of c_eff is exactly calculated. Keeping the ratio of the block size and the system size constant, the entanglement entropy exhibits a scaling property, however, the corresponding scaling function may be nonanalytic.
We argue that the entanglement entropy for a very small subsystem obeys a property which is analogous to the first law of thermodynamics when we excite the system. In relativistic setups, its effective temperature is proportional to the inverse of the subsystem size. This provides a universal relationship between the energy and the amount of quantum information. We derive the results using holography and confirm them in two dimensional field theories. We will also comment on an example with negative specific heat and suggest a connection between the second law of thermodynamics and the strong subadditivity of entanglement entropy.
After a brief introduction to the concept of entanglement in quantum systems, I apply these ideas to many-body systems and show that the von Neumann entropy is an effective way of characterising the entanglement between the degrees of freedom in different regions of space. Close to a quantum phase transition it has universal features which serve as a diagnostic of such phenomena. In the second part I consider the unitary time evolution of such systems following a `quantum quench in which a parameter in the hamiltonian is suddenly changed, and argue that finite regions should effectively thermalise at late times, after interesting transient effects.