From conformal to volume-law for the entanglement entropy in exponentially deformed critical spin 1/2 chains

An exponential deformation of 1D critical Hamiltonians gives rise to ground states whose entanglement entropy satisfies a volume-law. This effect is exemplified in the XX and Heisenberg models. In the XX case we characterize the crossover between the critical and the maximally entangled ground state in terms of the entanglement entropy and the entanglement spectrum.Comment: Accepted for the Special Issue: Quantum Entanglement in Condensed Matter Physics. 11 pages, 9 figures (with enhanced size to focus on the details) and new reference

Entanglement in low-energy states of the random-hopping model

We study the low-energy states of the 1D random-hopping model in the strong disordered regime. The entanglement structure is shown to depend solely on the probability distribution for the length of the effective bonds $P(l_b)$, whose scaling and finite-size behavior are established using renormalization-group arguments and a simple model based on random permutations. Parity oscillations are absent in the von Neumann entropy with periodic boundary conditions, but appear in the higher moments of the distribution, such as the variance. The particle-hole excited states leave the bond-structure and the entanglement untouched. Nonetheless, particle addition or removal deletes bonds and leads to an effective saturation of entanglement at an effective block size given by the expected value for the longest bond

Entanglement detachment in fermionic systems

This article introduces and discusses the concept of entanglement detachment. Under some circumstances, enlarging a few couplings of a Hamiltonian can effectively detach a (possibly disjoint) block within the ground state. This detachment is characterized by a sharp decrease in the entanglement entropy between block and environment, and leads to an increase of the internal correlations between the (possibly distant) sites of the block. We provide some examples of this detachment in free fermionic systems. The first example is an edge-dimerized chain, where the second and penultimate hoppings are increased. In that case, the two extreme sites constitute a block which disentangles from the rest of the chain. Further examples are given by (a) a superlattice which can be detached from a 1D chain, and (b) a star-graph, where the extreme sites can be detached or not depending on the presence of an external magnetic field, in analogy with the Aharonov-Bohm effect. We characterize these detached blocks by their reduced matrices, specially through their entanglement spectrum and entanglement Hamiltonian

Many-body Lattice Wavefunctions From Conformal Blocks

We introduce a general framework to construct many-body lattice wavefunctions starting from the conformal blocks (CBs) of rational conformal field theories (RCFTs). We discuss the different ways of encoding the physical degrees of freedom of the lattice system using both the internal symmetries of the theory and the fusion channels of the CBs. We illustrate this construction both by revisiting the known Haldane-Shastry model and by providing a novel implementation for the Ising RCFT. In the latter case, we find a connection to the Ising transverse field (ITF) spin chain via the Kramers-Wannier duality and the Temperley-Lieb-Jones algebra. We also find evidence that the ground state of the finite-size critical ITF Hamiltonian corresponds exactly to the wavefunction obtained from CBs of spin fields

Power accretion in social systems

We consider a model of power distribution in a social system where a set of agents plays a simple game on a graph: The probability of winning each round is proportional to the agent’s current power, and the winner gets more power as a result. We show that when the agents are distributed on simple one-dimensional and two-dimensional networks, inequality grows naturally up to a certain stationary value characterized by a clear division between a higher and a lower class of agents. High class agents are separated by one or several lower class agents which serve as a geometrical barrier preventing further flow of power between them. Moreover, we consider the effect of redistributive mechanisms, such as proportional (nonprogressive) taxation. Sufficient taxation will induce a sharp transition towards a more equal society, and we argue that the critical taxation level is uniquely determined by the system geometry. Interestingly, we find that the roughness and Shannon entropy of the power distributions are a very useful complement to the standard measures of inequality, such as the Gini index and the Lorenz curveWe acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Government through Grants No. FIS2015-69167-C2-1-P, No. FIS2015-66020-C2- 1-P, and No. PGC2018-094763-B-I0