English

Entanglement entropy of 2D conformal quantum critical points: hearing the shape of a quantum drum

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2008-11-26 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

The entanglement entropy of a pure quantum state of a bipartite system ABA \cup B is defined as the von Neumann entropy of the reduced density matrix obtained by tracing over one of the two parts. Critical ground states of local Hamiltonians in one dimension have entanglement that diverges logarithmically in the subsystem size, with a universal coefficient that for conformally invariant critical points is related to the central charge of the conformal field theory. We find the entanglement entropy for a standard class of z=2z=2 quantum critical points in two spatial dimensions with scale invariant ground state wave functions: in addition to a nonuniversal ``area law'' contribution proportional to the size of the ABAB boundary, there is generically a universal logarithmically divergent correction. This logarithmic term is completely determined by the geometry of the partition into subsystems and the central charge of the field theory that describes the equal-time correlations of the critical wavefunction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0605683,
  title  = {Entanglement entropy of 2D conformal quantum critical points: hearing the shape of a quantum drum},
  author = {Eduardo Fradkin and Joel E. Moore},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0605683},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

4 pages, 1 figure, 28 references