English

Universal entanglement entropy in 2D conformal quantum critical points

Statistical Mechanics 2009-03-28 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

We study the scaling behavior of the entanglement entropy of two dimensional conformal quantum critical systems, i.e. systems with scale invariant wave functions. They include two-dimensional generalized quantum dimer models on bipartite lattices and quantum loop models, as well as the quantum Lifshitz model and related gauge theories. We show that, under quite general conditions, the entanglement entropy of a large and simply connected sub-system of an infinite system with a smooth boundary has a universal finite contribution, as well as scale-invariant terms for special geometries. The universal finite contribution to the entanglement entropy is computable in terms of the properties of the conformal structure of the wave function of these quantum critical systems. The calculation of the universal term reduces to a problem in boundary conformal field theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0812.0203,
  title  = {Universal entanglement entropy in 2D conformal quantum critical points},
  author = {Benjamin Hsu and Michael Mulligan and Eduardo Fradkin and Eun-Ah Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0812.0203},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

14 pages, 3 figures, v2 references updated, minor changes

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:46:56.127Z