Quantum Spin Liquids (QSLs) are phases of interacting spins that do not order even at the absolute zero temperature, making it impossible to characterize them by a local order parameter. In this article, we review the unique view provided by the quantum entanglement on QSLs. We illustrate the crucial role of Topological Entanglement Entropy in diagnosing the non-local order in QSLs, using specific examples such as the Chiral Spin Liquid. We also demonstrate the detection of anyonic quasiparticles and their braiding statistics using quantum entanglement. In the context of gapless QSLs, we discuss the detection of emergent fermionic spinons in a bosonic wavefunction, by studying the size dependence of entanglement entropy.
In this paper we calculate the entanglement entropy of two coupled gapless systems in general spatial dimension d. The gapless systems can be either conformal field theories (CFT), or Fermi liquids. We assume the two systems are coupled uniformly in a h-dimensional submanifold of the space, with 0 <= h <= d. We will focus on the scaling of the entanglement entropy with the size of the system, and its scaling with the inter-system coupling constant g. Three approaches will be used for our calculation: (1) exact calculation with ground state wave-functional, (2) perturbative calculation with fun…
We investigate the behavior of bipartite as well as genuine multipartite entanglement of a resonating valence bond state on a ladder. We show that the system possesses significant amounts of bipartite entanglement in the steps of the ladder while no substantial bipartite entanglement is present in the rails. Genuine multipartite entanglement present in the system is negligible. The results are in stark contrast with the entanglement properties of the same state on isotropic lattices in two and higher dimensions, indicating that the geometry of the lattice can have important implications on the…
Topological order, reflected in long range patterns of entanglement, is quantified by the topological entanglement entropy (TEE) $γ$. We show that for gapped quantum spin liquids (QSL) it is possible to extract $γ$ using two-spin local correlators. We demonstrate our method for the gapped $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Kitaev spin liquid on a honeycomb lattice with anisotropic interactions. We show that the $γ= \log 2$ for $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order can be simply extracted from local two-spin correlators across two different bonds, with an accuracy comparable or higher than the Kitaev-Preskill construct…
The Landau paradigm of classifying phases by broken symmetries was demonstrated to be incomplete when it was realized that different quantum Hall states could only be distinguished by more subtle, topological properties. Today, the role of topology as an underlying description of order has branched out to include topological band insulators, and certain featureless gapped Mott insulators with a topological degeneracy in the groundstate wavefunction. Despite intense focus, very few candidates for these topologically ordered "spin liquids" exist. The main difficulty in finding systems that harbo…
Quantum critical chains are well described and understood by virtue of conformal field theory. Still the meaning of the real space entanglement spectrum -- the eigenvalues of the reduced density matrix -- of such systems remains in general elusive, even when there is an additional quantum number available such as spin or particle number. In this paper we explore in details the properties and the structure of the reduced density matrix of critical XXZ spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ chains. We investigate the quantum/thermal correspondence between the reduced density matrix of a $T=0$ pure quantum state and…
We consider a spin ladder model which is known to have matrix product states as exact ground states with spin liquid characteristics. The model has two critical-point transitions at the parameter values u=0 and infinity. We study the variation of entanglement and fidelity measures in the ground states as a function of u and specially look for signatures of quantum phase transitions at u=0 and infinity. The two different entanglement measures used are S(i) (the single-site von Neumann entropy) and S(i, j) (the two-body entanglement). At the quantum critical point (QCP) u=infinity, the entanglem…
We analyse in detail the effect of non-trivial band topology on the area law behaviour of the entanglement entropy in Kitaev's honeycomb model. By mapping the translationally invariant 2D spin model into 1D fermionic subsystems, we identify those subsystems responsible for universal entanglement contributions in the gapped phases and those responsible for critical entanglement scaling in the gapless phases. For the gapped phases we analytically show how the topological edge states contribute to the entanglement entropy and provide a universal lower bound for it. For the gapless semi-metallic p…
Quantum spin liquids are highly fascinating quantum liquids in which the spin degrees of freedom fractionalize. An interesting class of spin liquids are the exactly solvable, three-dimensional Kitaev spin liquids. Their fractionalized excitations are Majonara fermions, which may exhibit a variety of topological band structures --- ranging from topologically protected Weyl semi-metals over nodal semi-metals to systems with Majorana Fermi surfaces. We study the entanglement spectrum of such Kitaev spin liquids and verify that it is closely related to the topologically protected edge spectrum. Mo…
In Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 170502 (2007) (arXiv:quant-ph/0703227), we prove that resonating-valence-bond (RVB) states on arbitrary lattices possess genuine multiparty entanglement, and provide bounds on two-particle entanglement (and correlators). We also conjecture on the entanglement in large and small portions of the whole lattice. The proof, bound, and conjecture are not considered in the Comment in Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 248901 (2008) (arXiv:0812.1932v1 [quant-ph]). Next we take two examples: "RVB gas" and "RVB liquid". RVB liquid for arbitrary lattice size is not considered in the Comment. T…
Entanglement structure serves as a powerful way to characterize quantum many-body phases. This is particularly so for gapless quantum liquids, where entanglement-based tools provide one of the only means to systematically characterize these complicated phases. For example, the Fermi-surface structure of Fermi-liquids is revealed in entanglement entropy by a log-correction to the typical boundary-law scaling of simpler quantum ground-states. In this paper, I analyze the entanglement structure of a disordered, but delocalized diffusive metal. Using a combination of analytic arguments and numeric…
We study entanglement properties of candidate wave-functions for SU(2) symmetric gapped spin liquids and Laughlin states. These wave-functions are obtained by the Gutzwiller projection technique. Using Topological Entanglement Entropy γ as a tool, we establish topological order in chiral spin liquid and Z2 spin liquid wave-functions, as well as a lattice version of the Laughlin state. Our results agree very well with the field theoretic result γ=log D where D is the total quantum dimension of the phase. All calculations are done using a Monte Carlo technique on a 12 times 12 lattice enabling u…
The von Neumann entanglement entropy is studied with the density-matrix renormalization group technique. We propose a simple approach to calculate the central charge using the entanglement entropy for one-dimensional (1D) quantum system. This approach is applied to a couple of quantum systems: (i) 1D frustrated spin model and (ii) 1D half-filled spinless fermions with nearest-neighbor repulsion; and, it is confirmed that the central charge is estimated very accurately for the both systems. Also, a new method to determine the critical point between TL-liquid and gapped (or ordered) phases from …
Quantum spin liquids are phases of matter whose internal structure is not captured by a local order parameter. Particularly intriguing are critical spin liquids, where strongly interacting excitations control low energy properties. Here we calculate their bipartite entanglement entropy that characterize their quantum structure. In particular we calculate the Renyi entropy $S_2$, on model wavefunctions obtained by Gutzwiller projection of a Fermi sea. Although the wavefunctions are not sign positive, $S_2$ can be calculated on relatively large systems (>324 spins), using the variational Monte C…
While much is known about the entanglement characteristics of ground states, the properties of reduced thermal density matrices have received significantly less attention. Here we investigate the entanglement content of reduced thermal density matrices for momentum-space bipartitioning in Luttinger liquids using analytical and numerical methods. The low lying part of its spectrum contains an "entanglement gap", which persists up to temperatures comparable to the level spacing. With increasing temperature, the low energy modes acquire dispersion and resemble to those in the physical Hamiltonian…
We present a new method for calculating Renyi entanglement entropies for fermionic field-theories originating from microscopic Hamiltonians. The method builds on an operator identity which we discover for the first time. The identity leads to the representation of traces of operator products, and thus Renyi entropies of a subsystem, in terms of fermionic-displacement operators. This allows for a very transparent path-integral formulation, both in and out-of-equilibrium, having a simple boundary condition on the fermionic fields. The method is validated by reproducing well known expressions for…
We analyze the properties of a non-Abelian spin-1 chiral spin liquid state proposed by Greiter and Thomale [PRL 102, 207203 (2009)] using variational Monte Carlo. In this state the bosonic $ν= 1$ Moore-Read Pfaffian wave function is used to describe a gas of bosonic spin flips on a square lattice with one flux quantum per plaquette. For toroidal geometries there is a three-dimensional space of these states corresponding to the topological degeneracy of the bosonic Moore-Read state on the torus. We show that spin correlations for different states in this space become indistinguishable for large…
I compute the leading contribution to the ground state Renyi entropy $S_α$ for a region of linear size $L$ in a Fermi liquid. The result contains a universal boundary law violating term simply related the more familiar entanglement entropy. I also obtain a universal crossover function that smoothly interpolates between the zero temperature result and the ordinary thermal Renyi entropy of a Fermi liquid. Formulas for the entanglement entropy of more complicated regions, including non-convex and disconnected regions, are obtained from the conformal field theory formulation of Fermi surface dynam…
Boundary impurities are known to dramatically alter certain bulk properties of 1+1 dimensional strongly correlated systems. The entanglement entropy of a zero temperature Luttinger liquid bisected by a single impurity is computed using a novel finite size scaling/bosonization scheme. For a Luttinger liquid of length 2L and UV cut off, e, the boundary impurity correction (δS) to the bulk logarithmic entanglement entropy (S_{ent} ~ ln(L/e)) scales as δS ~ y ln(L/e), where y is the renormalized impurity coupling constant. In this way, the bulk entanglement entropy within a region is related to sc…
We introduce a novel momentum space entanglement renormalization group (MERG) scheme for the topologically ordered (T.O.) ground state of the 2D Hubbard model on a square lattice (\cite{anirbanmotti,anirbanmott2}) using a unitary quantum circuit comprised of non-local unitary gates. At each MERG step, the unitary quantum circuit disentangles a set of electronic states, thereby transforming the tensor network representation of the many-particle state. By representing the non-local unitary gate as a product of two-qubit disentangler gates, we provide an entanglement holographic mapping (EHM) rep…
We investigate tunneling between two spinful Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids (TLLs) realized, e.g., as two crossed nanowires or quantum Hall edge states. When injecting into each TLL one electron of opposite spin, the dc current measured after the crossing differs for singlet, triplet, or product states. This is a striking new non-Fermi liquid feature because the (mean) current in a noninteracting beam splitter is insensitive to spin entanglement. It can be understood in terms of collective excitations subject to spin-charge separation. This behavior may offer an easier alternative to traditional e…
On the triangular and kagome lattices, short-ranged resonating valence bond (RVB) wave functions can be sampled without the sign problem using a recently-developed Pfaffian Monte Carlo scheme. In this paper, we study the Renyi entanglement entropy in these wave functions using a replica-trick method. Using various spatial bipartitions, including the Levin-Wen construction, our finite-size scaled Renyi entropy gives a topological contribution consistent with $γ= \text{ln}(2)$, as expected for a gapped $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$ quantum spin liquid. We prove that the mutual statistics are consistent with …
Luttinger liquids (LLs) arise by coupling left- and right-moving particles through interactions in one dimension. This most natural partitioning of LLs is investigated by the momentum-space entanglement after a quantum quench using analytical and numerical methods. We show that the momentum-space entanglement spectrum of a LL possesses many universal features both in equilibrium and after a quantum quench. The largest entanglement eigenvalue is identical to the Loschmidt echo, i.e. the overlap of the disentangled and final wavefunctions of the system. The second largest eigenvalue is the overl…
We investigate the disorder-driven phase transition from a fractional quantum Hall state to an Anderson insulator using quantum entanglement methods. We find that the transition is signaled by a sharp increase in the sensitivity of a suitably averaged entanglement entropy with respect to disorder -- the magnitude of its disorder derivative appears to diverge in the thermodynamic limit. We also study the level statistics of the entanglement spectrum as a function of disorder. However, unlike the dramatic phase-transition signal in the entanglement entropy derivative, we find a gradual reduction…
We compute the entanglement entropy of a wide class of exactly solvable models which may be characterized as describing matter coupled to gauge fields. Our principle result is an entanglement sum rule which states that entropy of the full system is the sum of the entropies of the two components. In the context of the exactly solvable models we consider, this result applies to the full entropy, but more generally it is a statement about the additivity of universal terms in the entropy. We also prove that the Renyi entropy is exactly additive and hence that the entanglement spectrum factorizes. …
We investigate the time evolution towards the asymptotic steady state of a one dimensional interacting system after a quantum quench. We show that at finite time the latter induces entanglement between right- and left- moving density excitations, encoded in their cross-correlators, which vanishes in the long-time limit. This behavior results in a universal time-decay in system spectral properties $ \propto t^{-2} $, in addition to non-universal power-law contributions typical of Luttinger liquids. Importantly, we argue that the presence of quench-induced entanglement clearly emerges in transpo…
"Topological ordered" phases such as gapped quantum spin-liquids and fractional quantum Hall states possess ground state degeneracy on a torus. We show that the topological nature of this degeneracy has interesting consequences for the entanglement structure of the degenerate ground states. This leads to a simple method for detecting topological order, which is ready-made for numerical schemes such as density matrix renormalization group. The method is valid for phases that do or do not possess edge states alike. We demonstrate it by calculating the entanglement spectrum and the topological en…
We study numerically the universal conductance of Luttinger liquids wire with a single impurity via the Muti-scale Entanglement Renormalization Ansatz (MERA). The scale invariant MERA provides an efficient way to extract scaling operators and scaling dimensions for both the bulk and the boundary conformal field theories. By utilizing the key relationship between the conductance tensor and ground-state correlation function, the universal conductance can be evaluated within the framework of the boundary MERA. We construct the boundary MERA to compute the correlation functions and scaling dimensi…
We here investigate the entanglement structure of the ground state of a (3+1)-dimensional U(1) quantum spin liquid, which is described by the deconfined phase of a compact U(1) gauge theory. A gapless photon is the only low-energy excitation, with matter existing as deconfined but gapped excitations of the system. It is found that, for a given bipartition of the system, the elements of the entanglement spectrum can be grouped according to the electric flux between the two regions, leading to a useful interpretation of the entanglement spectrum in terms of electric charges living on the boundar…
Quantum spin liquids (QSL) are exotic phases of matter that host fractionalized excitations. It is difficult for local probes to characterize QSL, whereas quantum entanglement can serve as a powerful diagnostic tool due to its non-locality. The kagome antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model is one of the most studied and experimentally relevant models for QSL, but its solution remains under debate. Here, we perform a numerical Aharonov-Bohm experiment on this model and uncover universal features of the entanglement entropy. By means of the density-matrix renormalization group, we reveal the entangl…
The so-called ``non-Fermi liquid'' behavior is very common in strongly correlated systems. However, its operational definition in terms of ``what it is not'' is a major obstacle against theoretical understanding of this fascinating correlated state. Recently there has been much interest in entanglement entropy as a theoretical tool to study non-Fermi liquids. So far explicit calculations have been limited to models without direct experimental realizations. Here we focus on a two dimensional electron fluid under magnetic field and filling fraction $ν=1/2$, which is believed to be a non-Fermi li…
Momentum space entanglement entropy probes quantum correlations in interacting fermionic phases. It is very sensitive to interactions, obeying volume-law scaling in general, while vanishing in the Fermi gas. We show that the Rényi entropy in momentum space has a systematic expansion in terms of the phase space volume of the partition, which holds at all orders in perturbation theory. This permits, for example, the controlled computation of the entropy of thin shells near the Fermi wavevector in isotropic Fermi liquids and BCS superconductors. In the Fermi liquid, the thin shell entropy is a un…
In a recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 170502 (2007); quant-ph/0703227], Chandran and coworkers study the entanglement properties of valence bond (VB) states. Their main result is that VB states do not contain (or only an insignificant amount of) two-site entanglement, whereas they possess multi-body entanglement. Two examples ("RVB gas and liquid") are given to illustrate this claim, which essentially comes from a lower bound derived for spin correlators in VB states. We show in this Comment that (i) for the "RVB liquid" on the square lattice, the calculations and conclusions of Chandran et…
Projected entangled pair states (PEPS) provide exact representations for many non-chiral topologically ordered states whereas their range of applicability to interacting chiral topological phases remains largely unsettled. In this context, the symmetries of the local PEPS tensors are crucial for determining the characteristic topological features of the state. In this article we examine the constraints that arise when different symmetries are imposed simultaneously on the local tensor such as internal $SU(2)$, point group and translation symmetry. We show how the interplay of these symmetries …
Highly frustrated spin systems such as the kagome lattice (KL) are a treasure trove of new quantum states with large entanglements. We thus study the spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Heisenberg model on a kagome-strip chain (KSC), which is one-dimensional KL, using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. Calculating central charge and entanglement spectrum for the KSC, we find a novel gapless spin liquid state with doubly degenerate entanglement spectra in a 1/5 magnetization plateau. We also obtain a gapless low-lying continuum in the dynamic spin structure calculated by dynamical DMRG meth…
We use bosonic field theories and the infinite system density matrix renormalization group (iDMRG) method to study infinite strips of fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states starting from microscopic Hamiltonians. Finite-entanglement scaling allows us to accurately measure chiral central charge, edge mode exponents and momenta without finite-size errors. We analyze states in the first and second level of the standard hierarchy and compare our results to predictions of the chiral Luttinger liquid ($χ$LL) theory. The results confirm the universality of scaling exponents in chiral edges and demonstr…
We consider a system of two coupled Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids (TLL) on parallel chains and study the Renyi entanglement entropy $S_n$ between the two chains. Here the entanglement cut is introduced between the chains, not along the perpendicular direction as used in previous studies of one-dimensional systems. The limit $n\to1$ corresponds to the von Neumann entanglement entropy. The system is effectively described by two-component bosonic field theory with different TLL parameters in the symmetric/antisymmetric channels as far as the coupled system remains in a gapless phase. We argue that i…
We study a quantum phase transition which occurs in a system composed of two impurities (or quantum dots) each coupled to a different interacting (Luttinger-liquid) lead. While the impurities are coupled electrostatically, there is no tunneling between them. Using a mapping of this system onto a Kondo model, we show analytically that the system undergoes a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless quantum phase transition as function of the Luttinger liquid parameter in the leads and the dot-lead interaction. The phase with low values of the Luttinger-liquid parameter is characterized by an abrupt switc…
We present a theory for the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in the quantum-spin-liquid candidate material Na4Ir3O8. We consider an extended Hubbard model on the hyperkagome lattice, which incorporates atomic spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and multi-orbital interactions of iridium 5d electrons. This model is analyzed using the slave-rotor mean-field theory and thermodynamic properties across the MIT are studied. The ground state in the insulating side is a U(1) quantum spin liquid with spinon Fermi surfaces that consist of multiple particle-like and hole-like pockets. It is shown that the Wilson ra…
We consider the spin--orbital model for a magnetic system with singly occupied but triply degenerate $t_{2g}$ orbitals coupled into a planar, triangular lattice, as would be exemplified by NaTiO$_2$. We investigate the ground states of the model for interactions which interpolate between the limits of pure superexchange and purely direct exchange interactions. By considering ordered and dimerized states at the mean--field level, and by interpreting the results from exact diagonalization calculations on selected finite systems, we demonstrate that orbital interactions are always frustrated, and…
Quantum phases characterized by surfaces of gapless excitations are known to violate the otherwise ubiquitous boundary law of entanglement entropy in the form of a multiplicative log correction: $S\sim L^{d-1} \log L$. Using variational Monte Carlo, we calculate the second Rényi entropy for a model wavefunction of the $ν=1/2$ composite Fermi liquid (CFL) state defined on the two-dimensional triangular lattice. By carefully studying the scaling of the total Rényi entropy and, crucially, its contributions from the modulus and sign of the wavefunction on various finite-size geometries, we argue t…
In this work we compute subleading oscillating terms in the Renyi entropy of Fermi gases and Fermi liquids corresponding to $2k_F$-like oscillations. Our theoretical tools are the one dimensional formulation of Fermi liquid entanglement familiar from discussions of the logarithmic violation of the area law and quantum Monte Carlo calculations. The main result is a formula for the oscillating term for any region geometry and a spherical Fermi surface. We compare this term to numerical calculations of entanglement using the correlation function method and find excellent agreement. We also compar…
Theoretical models of the spin-orbital liquid (SOL) FeSc$_2$S$_4$ have predicted it to be in close proximity to a quantum critical point separating a spin-orbital liquid phase from a long-range ordered magnetic phase. Here, we examine the magnetic excitations of FeSc$_2$S$_4$ through time-domain terahertz spectroscopy under an applied magnetic field. At low temperatures an excitation emerges that we attribute to a singlet-triplet excitation from the SOL ground state. A three-fold splitting of this excitation is observed as a function of applied magnetic field. As singlet-triplet excitations ar…
The topological entanglement entropy(TEE) of Gutzwiller projected RVB state is studied with Monte Carlo simulation. New tricks are proposed to improve the convergence of TEE, which enable us to show that the spin liquid state studied in Ref.\cite{Vishwanath} actually does not support $Z_{2}$ topological order, a conclusion that is consistent with the information drawn from the inspection of the topological degeneracy on the same state. We find both a long ranged RVB amplitude and an approximate Marshall sign structure are at the origin of the suppression of vison gap in this spin liquid state.…
We construct a topological spin liquid (TSL) model on the kagome lattice, with SU(3) symmetry with the fundamental representation at each lattice site, based on Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS). Using the PEPS framework, we can adiabatically connect the model to a fixed point model (analogous to the dimer model for Resonating Valence Bond states) which we prove to be locally equivalent to a $Z_3$ quantum double model. Numerical study of the interpolation reveals no sign of a phase transition or long-range order, characterizing the model conclusively as a gapped TSL. We further study the …
The edge of the electronic fractional quantum Hall (FQH) system obeys the law of the chiral Luttinger liquid theory due to its intrinsic topological properties and the relation of bulk-edge correspondence. However, in a realistic experimental system, such as the usual Hall bar setup, the soften of the background confinement potential can induce the reconstruction of the edge spectrum which breaks the chirality and universality of the FQH edge. The entanglement spectrum (ES) of the FQH ground state has the same counting structure as that in the energy spectrum indicating the topological charact…
With the surge of research in quantum information, the issue of producing entangled states has gained prominence. Here, we show that judiciously bringing together two systems of strongly interacting electrons with vastly differing ground states - the gapped BCS superconductor and the Luttinger liquid, - can result in quantum entanglement. We propose three sets of measurements involving single-walled metallic carbon nanotubes (SWNT) which have been shown to exhibit Luttinger liquid physics, to test our claim and as nanoscience experiments of interest in and of themselves.
