Entanglement Entropy of Free Fermions in Timelike Slices

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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=(1 nK) spanning a time length ton the same
site. For zero temperature ground states, we find that SAshows volume law when ττ0= 2π/E0;
in contrast, SA1
3ln twhen τ=τ0, and SA1
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 [14] characterizes the spatial entanglement
information of quantum states [57]. For instance, the
entanglement entropy of gapped (gapless) ground states
satisfies the area law [811] (area law with a logarithmic
factor [1219]), 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 [2426] and black
holes [8,9,2730], 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 [3143]. It is also different from the temporal
entanglement entropy for influence matrix [4448] 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 ττ0= 2π/E0, while stabilizes to the
Calabrese-Cardy formula of 1D chiral fermions [1214]
when τ < τ0at zero temperature, indicating the exis-
tence of a continuous time limit (τ0). 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 =hAhAc).
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 eiHt ,(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
2
slice Aare calculable from the reduced density matrix
ρAin hA, namely,
Y
αA
Ornα,jα(tnα)= tr "ρAY
αA
Ornα,jα(tnα)#.(3)
Such a sub-Hilbert space is generically difficult to iden-
tify, but as we shall show, it can be identified straight-
forwardly for free fermion models.
A. Definition in the Heisenberg picture
We now show how sub-Hilbert space hAcan be iden-
tified for free fermion models. Consider a lattice model
(in any dimension) where each site rmhas one fermion
degree of freedom with annihilation operator crmand cre-
ation operator c
rmat time t= 0, with anti-commutators
{crm, c
rn}=δmn. Assume the model has a free fermion
Hamiltonian of the fermion bilinear form
H=X
i,j
c
rihij crj,(4)
which has charge conservation (the case without
charge conservation will be discussed in Sec. II C).
In an arbitrary slice Awith Kdiscrete spacetime
points (rn, tn), each annihilation operator crn(tn) =
eiHtncrneiHtn=Pjξnj crjat point (rn, tn) is the lin-
ear combination of crmat time t= 0. Accordingly, the
anti-commutations between crn(tn) and c
rm(tm) are not
delta functions, but are still numbers:
{crm(tm), c
rn(tn)}=Bmn ,(m, n A).(5)
Bmn gives a K×Knon-negative Hermitian commutation
matrix Bfor the Kpoints in slice A. By rewriting B=
Q1ΛQ
1with Λ diagonal and Q1unitary, we can define a
matrix M=Q2Λ1/2Q
1where Q2can be an arbitrary
unitary matrix, such that Msatisfies
MM=B1.(6)
Particularly, by QL decomposition, we choose Q2such
that Mis a lower triangular matrix for later purposes
of path integral formalism. We can then write down an
orthonormal fermion basis (in terms of the zero-time on-
site basis crj):
dm=X
nA
Mmncrn(tn) = X
nAX
j
Mmnξnj crj,(7)
and their Hermitian conjugates d
m(1 mK). It is
straightforward to see [51] that they satisfy
{dm, d
n}=δmn,(8)
and thus form an orthonormal fermion basis. hAis then
the Hilbert space of the Kfermion degrees of freedom dm,
which has a dimension dim[hA] = 2K. More explicitly,
the basis of the sub-Hilbert space hAis given by the 2K
Fock states Qm(d
m)ζm|0for ζm∈ {0,1}, 1 mK.
In contrast, the total Hilbert space of the system htot
has a basis given by the 2LFock states Qm(c
rn)ξn|0
for ξn∈ {0,1}, where Lis the total number of sites of
the system. This allows one to explicitly decompose the
total Hilbert space into the subsystem of slice A, and its
complement Acspanned by the Hilbert space of fermion
operators orthogonal to dmin Eq. (7):
htot =hAhAc.(9)
Any correlations among crn(tn) and c
rm(tm) are com-
pletely determined within sub-Hilbert space hA. We note
that our method for identifying sub-Hilbert space hAhere
is similar to the bulk Hilbert space reconstruction most
recently studied in Ref. [43].
As an illustrative example, consider a lattice of 3
sites with corresponding fermion annihilation operators
c1, c2, c3, respectively, and assume spacetime slice Acon-
tains two spacetime points: (x1, t1) = (x1,0) and (x2, t2),
with t1= 0 and t2̸= 0. For concreteness, assume the free
Hamiltonian is H=Pm,n c
mHmncn, and the matrix H
and time t2are such that the second column of unitary
matrix eiHt2has matrix elements eiHt2m2=1
3, we
can derive the fermion operators at these two points as
c1(t1) = c1, c2(t2) = 1
3(c1+c2+c3).(10)
Obviously, the above two fermion operators are not or-
thogonal, with their anti-commutation relation given by
{cm(tm), c
n(tn)}=Bmn , B = 11
3
1
31!.(11)
To find the Hilbert space spanned by the two fermion
operators c1(t1) and c2(t2), namely the sub-Hilbert space
hAof slice A, we need to find an orthonormal basis from
linear superposition of c1(t1) and c2(t2), one choice of
which is
d1=c1=c1(t1),
d2=1
2(c2+c3) = 1
2c1(t1) + r3
2c2(t2),(12)
or in matrix form,
dm=X
n
Mmncn(tn), M = 1 0
1
2q3
2!.(13)
This is the Mmatrix in Eq. (7), which satisfies
MM=B1,→ {dm, d
n}=δmn .(14)
The sub-Hilbert space hAspanned by c1(t1) and c2(t2)
is thus the direct product of the fermion Hilbert space of
d1and d2, which has dimension dim[hA]=22= 4.
3
(rn, tn)
(rn, t = 0)
t
A
A'
xy
(a)
x
t
τ
O
t
tn
τ0
(b)
x
t
O
(tn, xn)
l
θ
(c)
FIG. 1. (a) An arbitrary spacetime slice A(yellow) with
discrete spacetime points (rn, tn) at lattice sites rnand times
tn. In a 1D lattice fermion model, (b) shows a time-direction
slice (yellow) of length tcontaining Kpoints at times tn(1
nK) on the same site m= 0; (c) shows a linear slice
(yellow) containing points at tn=v1
maxxntan(θ) on the n-th
site (0 n1), with vmax defined in Eq. (42).
For pure Fock states or thermal mixed states (or gener-
ically Gaussian states) with density matrix ρtot in the
full system (which are time-independent in the Heisen-
berg picture here), the Wick’s theorem holds, and thus
the entanglement entropy SAcan be calculated from the
K×Ktwo-point correlation matrix Din the orthonormal
fermion basis dm[52], with matrix elements:
Dmn = tr(ρtotd
mdn)=(MCMT)mn ,(15)
where Cis the two-point correlation matrix in the space-
time basis with matrix elements
Cmn = tr ρtotc
rm(tm)crn(tn).(16)
By Wick’s theorem, the entanglement entropy SAin sub-
Hilbert space hAof slice Ais determined by the two-point
correlation matrix Das [52]
SA=tr [Dln D+ (ID) ln(ID)] ,(17)
where Iis the identity matrix.
We note that the choice of dmfermion basis is not
unique, but is up to a further unitary transformation
(namely, the unitary matrix Q2in defining the Mma-
trix can be arbitrary). However, the choice of dmfermion
operators does not change the entanglement entropy SA,
which is invariant under fermion basis unitary transfor-
mations.
When ρtot is a mixed state, we can also define the
mutual information between sub-Hilbert space hAof slice
Aand its complement hAc:
I=SA+SAcStot ,(18)
where SAc=tr(ρAcln ρAc) is the entanglement entropy
of subsystem Ac, and Stot =tr(ρtot ln ρtot) is the en-
tanglement entropy of the entire system. For a pure state
ρtot, one has Stot = 0 and I= 2SA. We note that how-
ever, for mixed states, neither entanglement entropy nor
mutual information is a good measure of the entangle-
ment between hAand hAc. (In fact, for mixed states it is
more proper to call SAthe von-Neumann entropy, but we
retain the name entanglement entropy for convenience,
x
t
O
l
AAc
(rn, tn)
Ac
FIG. 2. Non-constant time slice Ais part of a hypersurface
S=AActhat covers the entire space of the system.
as is adopted in many literature.) The entanglement of
mixed states can be for instance characterized by the en-
tanglement negativity [53,54], which we leave for future
studies.
B. Path integral formalism
To provide an understanding of the above definition of
spacetime slice entanglement entropy in Eq. (17) from a
spacetime local perspective, in this subsection we rewrite
it in terms of the coherent state path integral formal-
ism. The readers who are solely interested in the physical
outcomes of the spacetime slice entanglement entropy in
Eq. (17) may skip this subsection.
Conventionally, for a constant time tslice covering the
full space, the coherent state basis for path integral is
given by
|η(t)=Y
jh1ηrj(t)c
rj(t)i|0(19)
where ηrj(t) are anti-commuting Grassmann numbers
(which also anti-commutes with fermion operators), and
η(t)=(ηr1(t), ηr2(t),···)Tis the vector formed by all
ηrj(t). They give the values of the local fermion field
crj(t) at spacetime coordinate (rj, t), namely:
crj(t)|η(t)=ηrj(t)|η(t).(20)
The coherent states also satisfy the completeness condi-
tion:
ˆDη(t)D¯
η(t)|η(t)⟩⟨η(t)|= 1 .(21)
For a free fermion model with Hamiltonian as shown in
Eq. (4), the conventional path integral between two states
at tIand tFis done by inserting the coherent state basis
of constant time slices
ηF(tF)|eiH(tFtI)|ηI(tI)=ˆη(tF)=ηF
η(tI)=ηI
DηD¯
η
×ei´tF
tIdt[iPj¯ηrj(t)tηrj(t)Pjl hjl ¯ηrj(t)ηrl(t)].
(22)
4
Now for a non-constant time slice Ashown in Fig. 2,
we explain how to rewrite the path integral beginning or
ending on slice A, which would be useful for defining the
reduced density matrix ρAfor slice A.
Suppose slice Ais part of a hypersurface S=AAc
that covers the entire space of the system, where Acis
the complement of Asatisfying AAc= 0, as shown
in Fig. 2. We note that the choice of Acis arbitrary,
and the entire hypersurface do not need to be “space-
like”. For a space with Lsites, we assume hypersurface
Scontains Lspacetime points (rj, tj) with fermion op-
erators crj(tj), c
rj(tj) defined in the Heisenberg picture.
For convenience, we assume slice Acontains Kspacetime
points, and we sort the spacetime points (rj, tj) such that
the first Kpoints (1 jK) are those in slice A.
Our goal is to define a coherent state basis on hyper-
surface Ssatisfying
crj(tj)|ηS=ηrj(tj)|ηS,(23)
where ηrj(tj) are Grassmann numbers and is grouped
into a vector ηS= (ηr1(t1), ηr2(t2),···)T. To do this, we
follow the same prescription as in Sec. II A: we define the
anticommutation matrix in hypersurface Sto be
{crj(tj), c
rl(tl)}=BS
jl ,(j, l S) (24)
where it is easy to see that BSis a Hermitian matrix.
After diagonalizing it into BS=QS
1ΛSQS
1with ΛSdi-
agonal and QS
1unitary, we define NS=ΛS1
2QS
1. We
can then find a QL decomposition NS=QS
2MSwhere
QS
2is unitary and
MS=QS
2ΛS1
2QS
1=M0
MMc(25)
is a lower triangular matrix. It is easy to see that
MSMS=BS1. We have written MShere into a
block form with Mbeing a K×Kmatrix and Mca
(LK)×(LK) matrix. Accordingly, both Mand Mc
are lower triangular. Also, (MS)1will be lower trian-
gular.
We then define a new fermion complete basis djvia
dj=X
lS
MS
jlcrl(tl),crj(tj) = X
lS
(MS)1
jl dl,(26)
which satisfies
{dj, d
l}=δjl .(27)
Since (MS) and (MS)1are both lower triangular, the
first Kfermion operators djare only linear combina-
tions of the first Kfermion operators crj(tj) in slice A,
and vice versa, reducing to the definition of fermion basis
within slice Ain Eq. (7). In the new basis of Eq. (26) on
hypersurface S, we can define coherent states
|ηS=Y
jS"1X
k
ηrk(tk)MS
jkd
j#|0,(28)
which satisfies the definition of coherent states in
Eq. (23):
crj(tj)|ηS=X
lS
(MS)1
jl dl|ηS
=X
l,kS
(MS)1
jl MS
lkηrk(tk)|ηS=ηrj(tj)|ηS.(29)
For fixed hypersurface S, the completeness condition is
still satisfied:
|det(MS)|2ˆDηSD¯
ηS|ηS⟩⟨ηS|= 1 ,(30)
with |det(MS)|2being the Jacobian, which is a constant
factor that can be absorbed into the measure of path
integral.
We then note that such a coherent state can be decom-
posed as a direct product
|ηS=|ηA⟩⊗|ηAc,(31)
where
|ηA=Y
jA"1X
kA
ηrk(tk)Mjkd
j#|0(32)
only depends on the values of ηrj(tj) in subregion A, due
to the lower triangular form of matrix MS. The other
part |ηAcwill depend on the values of ηrj(tj) in both A
and Acthough.
In Schrodinger picture, consider a state with the den-
sity matrix ρtot(0) at t= 0. In terms of path integral, we
then define the density matrix on hypersurface Sin the
coherent state basis |ηSas
η
S|ρtot(S)|ηS=ˆDηD¯η
×ei´S
0dt(i¯
ηTtη¯
ηThη)ρtot(0)ei´0
Sdt(i¯
ηTtη¯
ηThη)
(33)
where initial and final states in the path integral are given
by ηI=ηSand ηF=η
S.
The reduced density matrix ρAin slice Ais then de-
fined by integrating out ηAC=η
ACin the path integral
while fixing ηAand η
A, which is equivalent to tracing
over the Hilbert space generated by djwith j > K. Af-
ter this partial trace, ρAonly depends on ηrj(tj)A,
which is equivalent to our formalism in Sec. II A. In this
formalism, the path integral is spacetime local.
C. Definition for free fermions with pairing
We can generalize our definition of spacetime entan-
glement entropy for free fermion Bogoliubov-de Gennes
(BdG) models with pairing of the form
H=X
i,j hij c
ricrj+1
2ij c
ric
rj+h.c.,(34)
5
where ∆ij =ji is the pairing amplitude.
In the slice Awith Kpoints (rn, tn), the annihilation
operator crn(tn) = eiHtncrneiHtnat point (rn, tn) will
be a Bogoliubov fermion mode which is the linear com-
bination of both crmand c
rmat time t= 0. This leads
to anti-commutation relations
{crm(tm), c
rn(tn)}=Bmn ,
{crm(tm), crn(tn)}=Vmn ,(m, n A),(35)
where by definition Bmn is a Hermitian matrix,
and Vmn is a symmetric matrix (not necessar-
ily real). By defining the Nambu basis ΦA=
(cr1(t1),··· , crK(tK), c
r1(t1),··· , c
rK(tK))Tof slice A,
we can rewrite the above anti-commutation relations as
{ΦA,Φ
A}=B V
VB=R , (36)
where Bis the complex conjugation of matrix B, and V
is the Hermitian conjugation of matrix V. In the absence
of pairing ∆ij , one would have V= 0. By definition, the
entire matrix Ris non-negative, Hermitian and respects
the particle-hole symmetry P RP 1=R, as ensured by
PΦA= (Φ
A)T, where the particle-hole transformation
matrix P=IKσx, with IKbeing the K×Kidentity
matrix and σxthe Pauli-xmatrix.
Then, one can show that there exists a transformation
matrix L(not unique) such that
LL=R1, P LP 1=L,(37)
namely, preserves the particle-hole symmetry P. This
allows us to transform the fermion operators into a
new Nambu basis ΨA= (d1, d2,··· , dK, d
1, d
2,··· , d
K)T
given by
ΨA=LΦA,(38)
where the fermion annihilation and creation operators dj,
d
jare orthogonal:
{di, d
j}=δij ,{di, dj}={d
i, d
j}= 0 .(39)
A systematical way of obtaining the transformation ma-
trix Lsatisfying Eq. (37) can be found in the SM [51].
Such a set of Kfermion modes djspans the 2Kdimen-
sional subHilbert space hAof spacetime slice A, similar
to the fermion number conserving case.
Once the fermion operators dj,d
jin Eq. (37) are ob-
tained, which identifies the degrees of freedom of the sub-
system of spacetime slice A, we can calculate the entan-
glement entropy SAfollowing Ref. [52]. For any given
quantum state ρtot which is a Fock state or generically
Gaussian state, one can calculate the entanglement en-
tropy SAinside the spacetime slice Aby calculating both
the normal and pairing correlation matrices:
Dij = tr hρtotd
idji, Fij = tr hρtotd
jd
ii,(40)
and then calculate the reduced density matrix ρAby fol-
lowing the standard formula derived in Ref. [52], which
we will not repeat here due to its relatively complicated
form.
III. ENTANGLEMENT ENTROPY IN
TIME-DIRECTION SLICE
A. Model and definitions
We note that our definition of entanglement entropy in
generic spacetime slice above holds for any free fermion
models in any spacetime dimensions. For simplicity, here-
after, we investigate the spacetime slice entanglement en-
tropy for the 1D tight-binding free fermion model with
fermion number conservation (namely, without pairing).
We consider the following model with Lsites and pe-
riodic boundary condition:
H=u
L1
X
m=0 c
m+1cm+c
mcm+1,(41)
where the hopping u > 0. The fermion energy at quasi-
momentum kis E(k) = 2ucos(ka0), where a0= 1 is
the lattice constant. The energy bandwidth is E0= 4u.
Accordingly, we define the characteristic time τ0and the
maximal Fermi velocity (the Lieb-Robinson bound veloc-
ity [55]) vmax of the model as
τ0=2π
E0
, vmax = max
dE(k)
dk
= 2ua0.(42)
Hereafter we set u=1
4. Besides, we denote the filling
(average fermion number per site) as ν[0,1].
We now consider the case of slice Abeing a time-
direction line segment of total time ton a fixed site
rn= 0, containing Kequally spaced points at time
tn= (n1)τwith coordinates
(rn, tn) = (0, tn) = (0,(n1)τ),(1 nK) (43)
and τ=t
K1is the spacing between adjacent times, as
shown in Fig. 1b.
We first study the entanglement entropy SAof thermal
states ρtot at temperature Tand filling νin slice A, and
then study that for non-eigenstates. We set LK,
for which Lcan be approximately viewed as infinite (the
thermodynamic limit), and SAis independent of L.
B. Zero temperature
At temperature T= 0, ρtot is a pure state (ground
state with a Fermi sea). For fixed total time t, as shown
in Fig. 3a, within the range K < t/τ0, or equivalently
τ > τ0,SAshows a triangular (trapezoid) shape curve
with respect to Kfor filling ν= 0.5 (ν̸= 0.5); while in
摘要:

EntanglementEntropyofFreeFermionsinTimelikeSlicesBoweiLiu,1HaoChen,1,2andBiaoLian11DepartmentofPhysics,PrincetonUniversity,Princeton,NewJersey08544,USA2DepartmentofElectricalandComputerEngineering,PrincetonUniversity,Princeton,NewJersey08544,USA(Dated:October29,2024)Wedefinetheentanglemententropyoff...

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