Boundary Renormalization Group Flow of Entanglement Entropy at a (2+1)-Dimensional Quantum Critical Point
Abstract
We investigate the second-order R\'enyi entanglement entropy at the quantum critical point of a spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a columnar dimerized square lattice. The universal constant in the area-law scaling is found to be sensitive to the entangling surface configurations, with for strong-bond-cut (special) surfaces and for weak-bond-cut (ordinary) surfaces, which is attributed to the distinct conformal boundary conditions. Introducing boundary dimerization drives a renormalization group (RG) flow from the special to the ordinary boundary criticality, and the constant decreases monotonically with increasing dimerization strength, demonstrating irreversible evolution under the boundary RG flow. These results provide numerical evidence for a higher-dimensional analog of the theorem, and suggest as a possible characteristic function for boundary RG flow in -dimensional conformal field theory.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.02044,
title = {Boundary Renormalization Group Flow of Entanglement Entropy at a (2+1)-Dimensional Quantum Critical Point},
author = {Zhiyan Wang and Zhe Wang and Yi-Ming Ding and Zenan Liu and Zheng Yan and Long Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.02044},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
6 pages, 3 figures. Published in Phys. Rev. B as a Letter. Updated to match the published version