English

Corrections to scaling in entanglement entropy from boundary perturbations

Statistical Mechanics 2011-02-02 v2 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We investigate the corrections to scaling of the Renyi entropies of a region of size l at the end of a semi-infinite one-dimensional system described by a conformal field theory when the corrections come from irrelevant boundary operators. The corrections from irrelevant bulk operators with scaling dimension x have been studied by Cardy and Calabrese (2010), and they found not only the expected corrections of the form l^(4-2x) but also unusual corrections that could not have been anticipated by finite-size scaling arguments alone. However, for the case of perturbations from irrelevant boundary operators we find that the only corrections that can occur to leading order are of the form l^(2-2x_b) for boundary operators with scaling dimension x_b < 3/2, and l^(-1) when x_b > 3/2. When x_b=3/2 they are of the form l^(-1)log(l). A marginally irrelevant boundary perturbation will give leading corrections going as log(l)^(-3). No unusual corrections occur when perturbing with a boundary operator.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1011.0448,
  title  = {Corrections to scaling in entanglement entropy from boundary perturbations},
  author = {Erik Eriksson and Henrik Johannesson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.0448},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

8 pages. Minor improvements and updated references. Published version