Parity superselection obstructs monogamy of mutual information in free fermions
Abstract
We prove that free fermions in the spin (tensor product) factorization violate monogamy of mutual information: for adjacent strips of width at all Fermi momenta, and for all at . Many-body computation at via the -matrix formula maps the scaling-limit function : it has a minimum of at , numerically establishing the conjecture for all and . The proof rests on an exact identity: the fermionic and spin reduced density matrices of disjoint regions , separated by differ by the parity insertion in the partial trace. A Perron--Frobenius argument proves element-wise coherence damping; for free fermions, an independent Gaussian bound gives the entropy ordering . Exact diagonalization confirms this for interacting fermions. DMRG on the - chain shows that the factorization contribution exceeds the genuine interaction contribution to by a factor of 8, accounting for of the deviation in spin-basis numerics. Strong repulsion () restores monogamy. Conversely, parity superselection enforces at all fillings (proved for ), with the ratio of parity entropy to quantum excess approaching . Any use of as a diagnostic for holographic duality, quantum chaos, or Fermi surface topology must specify the operator algebra; without this, the sign of is ambiguous.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.14154,
title = {Parity superselection obstructs monogamy of mutual information in free fermions},
author = {Aleksandrs Sokolovs},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.14154},
year = {2026}
}