Entanglement is a special feature of the quantum world that reflects the existence of subtle, often non-local, correlations between local degrees of freedom. In topological theories such non-local correlations can be given a very intuitive interpretation: quantum entanglement of subsystems means that there are "strings" connecting them. More generally, an entangled state, or similarly, the density matrix of a mixed state, can be represented by cobordisms of topological spaces. Using a formal mathematical definition of TQFT we construct basic examples of entangled states and compute their von Neumann entropy.
We introduce a novel model of multipartite entanglement based on topological links, generalizing the graph/hypergraph entropy cone program. We demonstrate that there exist link representations of entropy vectors which provably cannot be represented by graphs or hypergraphs. Furthermore, we show that the contraction map proof method generalizes to the topological setting, though now requiring oracular solutions to well-known but difficult problems in knot theory.
A charged entanglement entropy is a new measure which probes quantum entanglement between different charge sectors. We study symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases in 2+1 dimensional space-time by using this charged entanglement entropy. SPT phases are short range entangled states without topological order and hence cannot be detected by the topological entanglement entropy. We demonstrate that the universal part of the charged entanglement entropy is non-zero for non-trivial SPT phases and therefore it is a useful measure to detect short range entangled topological phases. We also discus…
We investigate how topological entanglement of Chern-Simons theory is captured in a string theoretic realization. Our explorations are motivated by a desire to understand how quantum entanglement of low energy open string degrees of freedom is encoded in string theory (beyond the oft discussed classical gravity limit). Concretely, we realize the Chern-Simons theory as the worldvolume dynamics of topological D-branes in the topological A-model string theory on a Calabi-Yau target. Via the open/closed topological string duality one can map this theory onto a pure closed topological A-model strin…
We study the ground-state entanglement of gapped domain walls between topologically ordered systems in two spatial dimensions. We derive a universal correction to the ground-state entanglement entropy, which is equal to the logarithm of the total quantum dimension of a set of superselection sectors localized on the domain wall. This expression is derived from the recently proposed entanglement bootstrap method.
"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 compute the entanglement entropy in a 2+1 dimensional topological order in the presence of gapped boundaries. Specifically, we consider entanglement cuts that cut through the boundaries. We argue that based on general considerations of the bulk-boundary correspondence, the "twisted characters" feature in the Renyi entropy, and the topological entanglement entropy is controlled by a "half-linking number" in direct analogy to the role played by the S-modular matrix in the absence of boundaries. We also construct a class of boundary states based on the half-linking numbers that provides a "clo…
In this paper, we study gapped edges/interfaces in a 2+1 dimensional bosonic topological order and investigate how the topological entanglement entropy is sensitive to them. We present a detailed analysis of the Ishibashi states describing these edges/interfaces making use of the physics of anyon condensation in the context of Abelian Chern-Simons theory, which is then generalized to more non-Abelian theories whose edge RCFTs are known. Then we apply these results to computing the entanglement entropy of different topological orders. We consider cases where the system resides on a cylinder wit…
Here we show the connection between topological order and the geometric entanglement, as measured by the logarithm of the overlap between a given state and its closest product state of blocks, for the topological universality class of the toric code model. As happens for the entanglement entropy, we find that for large block sizes the geometric entanglement is, up to possible subleading corrections, the sum of two contributions: a non-universal bulk contribution obeying a boundary law times the number of blocks, and a universal contribution quantifying the underlying pattern of long-range enta…
We propose a diagnostic for finite temperature topological order using `topological entanglement negativity', the long-range component of a mixed-state entanglement measure. As a demonstration, we study the toric code model in $d$ spatial dimension for $d$=2,3,4, and find that when topological order survives thermal fluctuations, it possesses a non-zero topological entanglement negativity, whose value is equal to the topological entanglement entropy at zero temperature. Furthermore, we show that the Gibbs state of 2D and 3D toric code at any non-zero temperature, and that of 4D toric code abov…
The first law of entanglement has been used to obtain the linearized Einstein equations of the holographic dual spacetimes. In the present paper, the first law of entanglement in quasi-topological gravity is explicitly derived by using the Iyer-Wald formalism. In addition, we investigate the extended first law of entanglement for the special case in Quasi-Topological gravity.
Topological entanglement entropy, a measure of the long-ranged entanglement, is related to the degeneracy of the ground state on a higher genus surface. The exact relation depends on the details of the topological theory. We consider a class of holographic models where such relation might be similar to the one exhibited by Chern-Simons theory in a certain large N limit. Both the non-vanishing topological entanglement entropy and the ground state degeneracy in these holographic models are consequences of the topological Gauss-Bonnet term in the dual gravitational description. A soft wall hologr…
The ground states of topological orders condense extended objects and support topological excitations. This nontrivial property leads to nonzero topological entanglement entropy $S_{topo}$ for conventional topological orders. Fracton topological order is an exotic class of models which is beyond the description of TQFT. With some assumptions about the condensates and the topological excitations, we derive a lower bound of the nonlocal entanglement entropy $S_{nonlocal}$ (a generalization of $S_{topo}$). The lower bound applies to Abelian stabilizer models including conventional topological ord…
The entanglement properties of a class of topological stabilizer states, the so called \emph{topological color codes} defined on a two-dimensional lattice or \emph{2-colex}, are calculated. The topological entropy is used to measure the entanglement of different bipartitions of the 2-colex. The dependency of the ground state degeneracy on the genus of the surface shows that the color code can support a topological order, and the contribution of the color in its structure makes it interesting to compare with the Kitaev's toric code. While a qubit is maximally entangled with rest of the system, …
In this paper and a companion one, we study the effect of integrable line defects on entanglement entropy in massive integrable field theories in 1+1 dimensions. The current paper focuses on topological defects that are purely transmissive. Using the form factor bootstrap method, we show that topological defects do not affect the the entanglement entropy in the UV limit and modify slightly the leading exponential correction in the IR. This conclusion holds for both unitary and non-unitary field theories. In contrast, non-topological defects affect the entanglement entropy more significantly bo…
Here we investigate the connection between topological order and the geometric entanglement, as measured by the logarithm of the overlap between a given state and its closest product state of blocks. We do this for a variety of topologically-ordered systems such as the toric code, double semion, color code, and quantum double models. As happens for the entanglement entropy, we find that for sufficiently large block sizes the geometric entanglement is, up to possible sub-leading corrections, the sum of two contributions: a bulk contribution obeying a boundary law times the number of blocks, and…
Entanglement entropy is an important quantity in field theory, but its definition poses some challenges. The naive definition involves an extension of quantum field theory in which one assigns Hilbert spaces to spatial sub-regions. For two-dimensional topological quantum field theory we show that the appropriate extension is the open-closed topological quantum field theory of Moore and Segal. With the addition of one additional axiom characterizing the `entanglement brane' we show how entanglement calculations can be cast in this framework. We use this formalism to calculate modular Hamiltonia…
Identifying entanglement-based order parameters characterizing topological systems, in particular topological superconductors and topological insulators, has remained a major challenge for the physics of quantum matter in the last two decades. Here we show that the end-to-end, long-distance, bipartite squashed entanglement between the edges of a many-body system, defined in terms of the edge-to-edge quantum conditional mutual information, is the natural nonlocal order parameter for topological superconductors in one dimension as well as in quasi one-dimensional geometries. For the Kitaev chain…
In this paper, we calculate the topological entanglement entropy of the BTZ black hole and find that it coincides with that for fractional quantum Hall state. So the BTZ black holes have the same topological order with the fractional quantum Hall state. This fact indicate that the BTZ black holes have long-range entanglement.
Entanglement entropy in topologically ordered matter phases has been computed extensively using various methods. In this paper, we study the entanglement entropy of topological phases in two-spaces from a new perspective---the perspective of quasiparticle fluctuations. In this picture, the entanglement spectrum of a topologically ordered system is identified with the spectrum of quasiparticle fluctuations of the system, and the entanglement entropy measures the maximal quasiparticle fluctuations on the EB. As a consequence, entanglement entropy corresponds to the thermal entropy of the quasipa…
Interacting disordered zigzag graphene nanoribbons have fractional charges, are quasi-one-dimensional, and display an exponentially small gap. Our numerical computations showed that the topological entanglement entropy of these systems has a small finite but universal value, independent of the strength of the interaction and the disorder. The result that was obtained for the topological entanglement entropy shows that the disorder-free phase is critical and becomes unstable in the presence of disorder.
If an extensive partition in two dimensions yields a gapful entanglement spectrum of the reduced density matrix, the Berry curvature based on the corresponding entanglement eigenfunction defines the Chern number. We propose such an entanglement Chern number as a useful, natural, and calculable topological invariant, which is potentially relevant to various topological ground states. We show that it serves as an alternative topological invariant for time-reversal invariant systems and as a new topological invariant for a weak topological phase of a superlattice Wilson-Dirac model. In principle,…
We present a detailed analysis of topological properties of the valence bond solid (VBS) states doped with fermionic holes. As concrete examples, we consider the supersymmetric extension of the SU(2)- and the SO(5) VBS states, dubbed UOSp(1|2) and UOSp(1|4) supersymmetric VBS states, respectively. Specifically, we investigate the string-order parameters and the entanglement spectra of these states to find that, even when the parent states (bosonic VBS states) do not support the string order, they recover it when holes are doped and the fermionic sector appears in the entanglement spectrum. The…
In this paper we calculate the entanglement entropy for topological interfaces in rational conformal field theories for the case where the interface lies at the boundary of the entangling interval and for the case where it is located in the center of the entangling interval. We compare the results to each other and also to the recently calculated left/right entropy of a related BCFT. We also comment of the entanglement entropies for topological interfaces for a free compactified boson and Liouville theory.
We compute directly the entanglement entropy of spatial regions in Chern-Simons gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions using surgery. We use these results to determine the universal topological piece of the entanglement entropy for Abelian and non-Abelian quantum Hall fluids.
This paper discusses ER = EPR, the hypothesis of Susskind and Maldacena that entangled black holes are connected by an Einstein-Rosen bridge, and that more generally, quantum entanglement is accompanied by topological connectivity. Given a background space and a quantum tensor network, we describe how to construct a new topological space, that welds the network and the background space together. This construction embodies the principle that quantum entanglement and topological connectivity are intimately related.
We investigate the evolution of complexity and entanglement following a quench in a one-dimensional topological system, namely the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. We demonstrate that complexity can detect quantum phase transitions and shows signatures of revivals; this observation provides a practical advantage in information processing. We also show that the complexity saturates much faster than the entanglement entropy in this system, and we provide a physical argument for this. Finally, we demonstrate that complexity is a less sensitive probe of topological order, compared with measures of enta…
Black holes in 2+1 dimensions enjoy long range topological interactions similar to those of non-abelian anyon excitations in a topologically ordered medium. Using this observation, we compute the topological entanglement entropy of BTZ black holes, via the established formula S_top = log(S^a_0), with S_b^a the modular S-matrix of the Virasoro characters chi_a(tau). We find a precise match with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. This result adds a new twist to the relationship between quantum entanglement and the interior geometry of black holes. We generalize our result to higher spin black holes…
This is the second part of two papers where we study the effect of integrable line defects on bipartite entanglement entropy in integrable field theories. In this paper, we consider non-topological line defects in Ising field theory. We derive an infinite series expression for the entanglement entropy and show that both the UV and IR limits of the bulk entanglement entropy are modified by the line defect. In the UV limit, we give an infinite series expression for the coefficient in front of the logarithmic divergence and the exact defect $g$-function. By tuning the defect to be purely transmis…
We explore a web of connections between quantum entanglement and knot theory by examining how topological entanglement entropy probes the braiding data of quasi-particles in Chern-Simons theory, mainly using $SU(2)$ gauge group as our working example. The problem of determining the Renyi entropy is mapped to computing the expectation value of an auxiliary Wilson loop in $S^3$ for each braid. We study various properties of this auxiliary Wilson loop for some 2-strand and 3-strand braids, and demonstrate how they reflect some geometrical properties of the underlying braids.
The origin of thermal and quantum entanglement in a class of three-dimensional spin models, at low momenta, is traced to purely topological reasons. The establishment of the result is facilitated by the gauge principle which, when used in conjunction with the duality mapping of the spin models, enables us to recast them as lattice Chern-Simons gauge theories. The thermal and quantum entanglement measures are expressed in terms of the expectation values of Wilson lines, loops, and their generalisations. For continuous spins, these are known to yield the topological invariants of knots and links…
In this paper we explore how non trivial boundary conditions could influence the entanglement entropy in a topological order in 2+1 dimensions. Specifically we consider the special class of topological orders describable by the quantum double. We will find very interesting dependence of the entanglement entropy on the boundary conditions particularly when the system is non-Abelian. Along the way, we demonstrate a streamlined procedure to compute the entanglement entropy, which is particularly efficient when dealing with systems with boundaries. We also show how this method efficiently reproduc…
Gapped interfaces (and boundaries) of two-dimensional (2D) Abelian topological phases are shown to support a remarkably rich sequence of 1D symmetry-protected topological (SPT) states. We show that such interfaces can provide a physical interpretation for the corrections to the topological entanglement entropy of a 2D state with Abelian topological order found in Ref.~\onlinecite{cano-2015}. The topological entanglement entropy decomposes as $γ= γ_a + γ_s$, where $γ_a > 0$ only depends on universal topological properties of the 2D state, while a correction $γ_s > 0$ signals the emergence of th…
We show that, in discrete models of quantum gravity, emergent geometric space can be viewed as the entanglement pattern in a mixed quantum state of the "universe", characterized by a universal topological network entanglement. As a concrete example we analyze the recently proposed model in which geometry emerges due to the condensation of 4-cycles in random regular bipartite graphs, driven by the combinatorial Ollivier-Ricci curvature. Using this model we show that the emergence of geometric order decreases the entanglement entropy of random configurations. The lowest geometric entanglement en…
We develop an approach based on edge theories to calculate the entanglement entropy and related quantities in (2+1)-dimensional topologically ordered phases. Our approach is complementary to, e.g., the existing methods using replica trick and Witten's method of surgery, and applies to a generic spatial manifold of genus $g$, which can be bipartitioned in an arbitrary way. The effects of fusion and braiding of Wilson lines can be also straightforwardly studied within our framework. By considering a generic superposition of states with different Wilson line configurations, through an interferenc…
We propose a renormalization scheme for Entanglement Entropy of 3D CFTs with a 4D asymptotically AdS gravity dual in the context of the gauge/gravity correspondence. The procedure consists in adding the Chern form as a boundary term to the area functional of the Ryu-Takayanagi minimal surface. We provide an explicit prescription for the renormalized Entanglement Entropy, which is derived via the replica trick. This is achieved by considering a Euclidean gravitational action renormalized by the addition of the Chern form at the spacetime boundary, evaluated in the conically-singular replica man…
In this paper we consider entanglement entropies in two-dimensional conformal field theories in the presence of topological interfaces. Tracing over one side of the interface, the leading term of the entropy remains unchanged. The interface however adds a subleading contribution, which can be interpreted as a relative (Kullback-Leibler) entropy with respect to the situation with no defect inserted. Reinterpreting boundaries as topological interfaces of a chiral half of the full theory, we rederive the left/right entanglement entropy in analogy with the interface case. We discuss WZW models and…
We use the entanglement negativity, a bipartite measure of entanglement in mixed quantum states, to study how multipartite entanglement constrains the real-space structure of the ground state wavefunctions of $(2+1)$-dimensional topological phases. We focus on the (Abelian) Laughlin and (non-Abelian) Moore-Read states at filling fraction $ν=1/m$. We show that a combination of entanglement negativities, calculated with respect to specific cylinder and torus geometries, determines a necessary condition for when a topological state can be disentangled, i.e., factorized into a tensor product of st…
A quantum phase transition is usually achieved by tuning physical parameters in a Hamiltonian at zero temperature. Here, we demonstrate that the ground state of a topological phase itself encodes critical properties of its transition to a trivial phase. To extract this information, we introduce a partition of the system into two subsystems both of which extend throughout the bulk in all directions. The resulting bulk entanglement spectrum has a low-lying part that resembles the excitation spectrum of a bulk Hamiltonian, which allows us to probe a topological phase transition from a single wave…
We discuss how strongly interacting higher-order symmetry protected topological (HOSPT) phases can be characterized from the entanglement perspective: First, we introduce a topological many-body invariant which reveals the non-commutative algebra between flux operator and $C_n$ rotations. We argue that this invariant denotes the angular momentum carried by the instanton which is closely related to the discrete Wen-Zee response and fractional corner charge. Second, we define a new entanglement property, dubbed `higher-order entanglement', to scrutinize and differentiate various higher-order top…
We study the topological entanglement negativity between two spatial regions in (2+1)-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge theories by using the replica trick and the surgery method. For a bipartitioned or tripartitioned spatial manifold, we show how the topological entanglement negativity depends on the presence of quasiparticles and the choice of ground states. In particular, for two adjacent non-contractible regions on a tripartitioned torus, the entanglement negativity provides a simple way to distinguish Abelian and non-Abelian theories. Our method applies to a Chern-Simons gauge theory defined…
Excitations in (3+1)D topologically ordered phases have very rich structures. (3+1)D topological phases support both point-like and string-like excitations, and in particular the loop (closed string) excitations may admit knotted and linked structures. In this work, we ask the question how different types of topological excitations contribute to the entanglement entropy, or alternatively, can we use the entanglement entropy to detect the structure of excitations, and further obtain the information of the underlying topological orders? We are mainly interested in (3+1)D topological orders that …
We study the entanglement entropy between (possibly distinct) topological phases across an interface using an Abelian Chern-Simons description with topological boundary conditions (TBCs) at the interface. From a microscopic point of view, these TBCs correspond to turning on particular gapping interactions between the edge modes across the interface. However, in studying entanglement in the continuum Chern-Simons description, we must confront the problem of non-factorization of the Hilbert space, which is a standard property of gauge theories. We carefully define the entanglement entropy by usi…
A given fractional quantum Hall state may admit multiple, distinct edge phases on its boundary. We explore the implications that multiple edge phases have for the entanglement spectrum and entropy of a given bulk state. We describe the precise manner in which the entanglement spectrum depends upon local (tunneling) interactions along an entanglement cut and throughout the bulk. The sensitivity to local conditions near the entanglement cut appears not only in gross features of the spectrum, but can also manifest itself in an additive, positive constant correction to the topological entanglement…
The topological entanglement entropy is used to measure long-range quantum correlations in the ground state of topological phases. Here we obtain closed form expressions for topological entropy of (2+1)- and (3+1)-dimensional loop gas models, both in the bulk and at their boundaries, in terms of the data of their input fusion categories and algebra objects. Central to the formulation of our results are generalized $\mathcal{S}$-matrices. We conjecture a general property of these $\mathcal{S}$-matrices, with proofs provided in many special cases. This includes constructive proofs for categories…
Rényi and entanglement entropies are constructed for 2d q-deformed topological Yang-Mills theories with gauge group $U(N)$, as well as the dual 3d Chern-Simons (CS) theory on Seifert manifolds. When $q=\exp[2πi/(N+K)]$, and $K$ is odd, the topological Rényi entropy and Wilson line observables of the CS theory can be expressed in terms of the modular transformation matrices of the WZW theory, $\rm{\hat{U}(N)}_{K,N(K+N)}$. If both $K$ and $N$ are odd, there is a level-rank duality of the 2d qYM theory and of the associated CS theory, as well as that of the Rényi and entanglement entropies, and W…
We study the entanglement entropy in confining theories with gravity duals using the holographic prescription of Ryu and Takayanagi. The entanglement entropy between a region and its complement is proportional to the minimal area of a bulk hypersurface ending on their border. We consider a disk in 2+1 dimensions and a ball in 3+1 dimensions and find in both cases two types of bulk hypersurfaces with different topology, similar to the case of the slab geometry considered by Klebanov, Kutasov and Murugan. Depending on the value of the radius, one or the other type of hypersurfaces dominates the …
We study the real-space entanglement renormalization group flows of topological band insulators in (2+1) dimensions by using the continuum multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (cMERA). Given the ground state of a Chern insulator, we construct and study its cMERA by paying attention, in particular, to how the bulk holographic geometry and the Berry curvature depend on the topological properties of the ground state. It is found that each state defined at different energy scale of cMERA carries a nonzero Berry flux, which is emanated from the UV layer of cMERA, and flows towards the IR…
This is the second in a two-part paper devoted to studying entanglement entropy and edge modes in the A model topological string theory. This theory enjoys a gauge-string (Gopakumar-Vafa) duality which is a topological analogue of AdS/CFT. In part 1, we defined a notion of generalized entropy for the topological closed string theory on the resolved conifold. We provided a canonical interpretation of the generalized entropy in terms of the q-deformed entanglement entropy of the Hartle-Hawking state. We found string edge modes transforming under a quantum group symmetry and interpreted them as e…
