English

Parity superselection obstructs monogamy of mutual information in free fermions

Statistical Mechanics 2026-03-20 v2

Abstract

We prove that free fermions in the spin (tensor product) factorization violate monogamy of mutual information: I3spin>0I_3^{\mathrm{spin}} > 0 for adjacent strips of width w6w \le 6 at all Fermi momenta, and for all ww at z=kFw<z1.329z = k_F w < z^* \approx 1.329. Many-body computation at w=6w=6 via the GG-matrix formula maps the scaling-limit function I3spin(z)I_3^{\mathrm{spin}}(z): it has a minimum of 0.1000.100 at z1.5z \approx 1.5, numerically establishing the conjecture I3spin>0I_3^{\mathrm{spin}} > 0 for all zz and ww. The proof rests on an exact identity: the fermionic and spin reduced density matrices of disjoint regions AA, DD separated by BB differ by the parity insertion (1)NB(-1)^{N_B} in the partial trace. A Perron--Frobenius argument proves element-wise coherence damping; for free fermions, an independent Gaussian bound gives the entropy ordering ΔSAD0\Delta S_{AD} \ge 0. Exact diagonalization confirms this for interacting fermions. DMRG on the tt-VV chain shows that the factorization contribution exceeds the genuine interaction contribution to I3I_3 by a factor of 8, accounting for 80%\sim 80\% of the deviation in spin-basis numerics. Strong repulsion (K0.7K \lesssim 0.7) restores monogamy. Conversely, Z2Z_2 parity superselection enforces I30I_3 \le 0 at all fillings (proved for w3w \le 3), with the ratio of parity entropy to quantum excess approaching 2ln2/(3ln(4/3))=1.6062\ln 2/(3\ln(4/3)) = 1.606. Any use of I3I_3 as a diagnostic for holographic duality, quantum chaos, or Fermi surface topology must specify the operator algebra; without this, the sign of I3I_3 is ambiguous.

Keywords

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}
}