Entanglement in spatially inhomogeneous many-fermion systems
Abstract
We investigate entanglement of strongly interacting fermions in spatially inhomogeneous environments. To quantify entanglement in the presence of spatial inhomogeneity, we propose a local-density approximation (LDA) to the entanglement entropy, and a nested LDA scheme to evaluate the entanglement entropy on inhomogeneous density profiles. These ideas are applied to models of electrons in superlattice structures with different modulation patterns, electrons in a metallic wire in the presence of impurities, and phase-separated states in harmonically confined many-fermion systems, such as electrons in quantum dots and atoms in optical traps. We find that the entanglement entropy of inhomogeneous systems is strikingly different from that of homogeneous systems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0710.2095,
title = {Entanglement in spatially inhomogeneous many-fermion systems},
author = {V. V. França and K. Capelle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0710.2095},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
revised version (added more impurity data, corrected typos, added discussion) to appear in Phys.Rev.Lett. (2008)