
Entanglement Entropy of Free Fermions in Timelike Slices
Bowei Liu,1Hao Chen,1, 2 and Biao Lian1
1Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
(Dated: October 29, 2024)
We define the entanglement entropy of free fermion quantum states in an arbitrary spacetime slice
of a discrete set of points, and particularly investigate timelike (causal) slices. For 1D lattice free
fermions with an energy bandwidth E0, we calculate the time-direction entanglement entropy SAin
a time-direction slice of a set of times tn=nτ (1 ≤n≤K) spanning a time length ton the same
site. For zero temperature ground states, we find that SAshows volume law when τ≫τ0= 2π/E0;
in contrast, SA∼1
3ln twhen τ=τ0, and SA∼1
6ln twhen τ < τ0, resembling the Calabrese-Cardy
formula for one flavor of nonchiral and chiral fermion, respectively. For finite temperature thermal
states, the mutual information also saturates when τ < τ0. For non-eigenstates, volume law in t
and signatures of the Lieb-Robinson bound velocity can be observed in SA. For generic spacetime
slices with one point per site, the zero temperature entanglement entropy shows a clear transition
from area law to volume law when the slice varies from spacelike to timelike.
I. INTRODUCTION
The entanglement entropy of a subsystem in a bipar-
tite system [1–4] characterizes the spatial entanglement
information of quantum states [5–7]. For instance, the
entanglement entropy of gapped (gapless) ground states
satisfies the area law [8–11] (area law with a logarithmic
factor [12–19]), while topological orders can be detected
via correction to the area law known as the topological
entanglement entropy [20,21]. Moreover, the subsystem
entanglement entropy of excited states can exhibit either
area law or volume law, indicating (many-body) localiza-
tion or quantum chaos, respectively [11,22,23].
The spatial subregion entanglement entropy, although
related to thermodynamics in many aspects including the
eigenstate thermalization hypothesis [24–26] and black
holes [8,9,27–30], is a nonlocal quantity. Therefore, we
ask if entanglement entropy of quantum states can be de-
fined in a timelike slice, such as an observer’s worldline,
which would be locally observable. For free fermion mod-
els, we show that the entanglement entropy of a quantum
state can be explicitly defined for any spacetime slice
consisting of a discrete set of points, which has not been
discussed in previous studies of spacetime quantum en-
tanglement [31–43]. It is also different from the temporal
entanglement entropy for influence matrix [44–48] or sim-
ilar generalizations in tensor networks [49,50], which is
defined for an effective time-direction “quantum state”,
instead of for the physical quantum state (see Sec. V, and
supplementary material (SM) [51] Sec. II).
We particularly investigate the entanglement entropy
of one-dimensional (1D) free lattice fermions in an on-
site time-direction slice of discrete times separated by τ
(Fig. 1b). For lattice fermions with an energy spectrum
of range E0, we find the time-direction entanglement en-
tropy of thermal states is maximal and temperature in-
dependent when τ≫τ0= 2π/E0, while stabilizes to the
Calabrese-Cardy formula of 1D chiral fermions [12–14]
when τ < τ0at zero temperature, indicating the exis-
tence of a continuous time limit (τ→0). The mutual
information at finite temperature also stabilizes when
τ < τ0. For non-eigenstates, the time-direction entan-
glement entropy exhibits volume law and can probe the
Lieb-Robinson bound velocity. Moreover, we show that
the entanglement entropy exhibits a crossover of behav-
iors between spacelike and timelike slices.
This paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II we for-
mulate the generic definition of spacetime slice entangle-
ment entropy of free fermion lattice models, from both
operator and path integral formalisms. Then for the ex-
ample of 1D free fermions, we study the entanglement
entropy in the time-direction slice in Sec. III, and in
generic spacelike and timelike linear spacetime slices in
Sec. IV. We then discuss possible future developments in
Sec. V.
II. ENTANGLEMENT ENTROPY OF FREE
FERMIONS IN AN ARBITRARY
SPACETIME SLICE
Consider a system with a total Hilbert space htot. For
an arbitrary spacetime slice A(Fig. 1a), if a sub-Hilbert
space hAcan be identified for it, we can define its reduced
density matrix ρAand entanglement entropy SAas
ρA= trhAc(ρtot), SA=−tr(ρAln ρA),(1)
where hAcis the complement of hA(htot =hA⊗hAc).
To do so, we impose the Heisenberg picture, such that
quantum states are time-independent, while operators at
spacetime point (r, t) are defined by
Or,j (t) = eiHtOr,j e−iHt ,(2)
where His the Hamiltonian. We then define hAas the
minimal sub-Hilbert space such that the correlations of
any operators Orn,j (tn) at spacetime points (rn, tn) in
arXiv:2210.03134v4 [cond-mat.stat-mech] 28 Oct 2024