Entanglement sum rules in exactly solvable models

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. Our proof simultaneously extends and simplifies previous arguments, with extensions including new models at zero temperature as well as the ability to treat finite temperature crossovers. We emphasize that while the additivity is an exact statement, each term in the sum may still be difficult to compute. Our results apply to a wide variety of phases including Fermi liquids, spin liquids, and some non-Fermi liquid metals

Holographic Complexity of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton Gravity

We study the holographic complexity of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity using the recently proposed "complexity = volume" and "complexity = action" dualities. The model we consider has a ground state that is represented in the bulk via a so-called hyperscaling violating geometry. We calculate the action growth of the Wheeler-DeWitt patch of the corresponding black hole solution at non-zero temperature and find that, in the presence of violations of hyperscaling, there is a parametric enhancement of the action growth rate. We partially match this behavior to simple tensor network models which can capture aspects of hyperscaling violation. We also exhibit the switchback effect in complexity growth using shockwave geometries and comment on a subtlety of our action calculations when the metric is discontinuous at a null surface.Comment: 30 pages; v2: Fixed a technical error. Corrected result no longer has a logarithmic divergence in the action growth rate associated with the singularity. Conjectured complexity growth rate now also matches better with tensor network model

Entanglement Entropy and the Fermi Surface

Free fermions with a finite Fermi surface are known to exhibit an anomalously large entanglement entropy. The leading contribution to the entanglement entropy of a region of linear size $L$ in $d$ spatial dimensions is $S\sim L^{d-1} \log{L}$, a result that should be contrasted with the usual boundary law $S \sim L^{d-1}$. This term depends only on the geometry of the Fermi surface and on the boundary of the region in question. I give an intuitive account of this anomalous scaling based on a low energy description of the Fermi surface as a collection of one dimensional gapless modes. Using this picture, I predict a violation of the boundary law in a number of other strongly correlated systems.Comment: 4 pages, 2 improved figures added, references adde

Entanglement does not generally decrease under renormalization

Renormalization is often described as the removal or "integrating out" of high energy degrees of freedom. In the context of quantum matter, one might suspect that quantum entanglement provides a sharp way to characterize such a loss of degrees of freedom. Indeed, for quantum many-body systems with Lorentz invariance, such entanglement monotones have been proven to exist in one, two, and three spatial dimensions. In each dimension d, a certain term in the entanglement entropy of a d-ball decreases along renormalization group (RG) flows. Given that most quantum many-body systems available in the laboratory are not Lorentz invariant, it is important to generalize these results if possible. In this work we demonstrate the impossibility of a wide variety of such generalizations. We do this by exhibiting a series of counterexamples with understood renormalization group flows which violate entanglement RG monotonicity. We discuss bosons at finite density, fermions at finite density, and majorization in Lorentz invariant theories, among other results.Comment: 7 pages, fixed an incorrect referenc

Onset of many-body chaos in the O(N)O(N) model

The growth of commutators of initially commuting local operators diagnoses the onset of chaos in quantum many-body systems. We compute such commutators of local field operators with $N$ components in the $(2+1)$-dimensional $O(N)$ nonlinear sigma model to leading order in $1/N$. The system is taken to be in thermal equilibrium at a temperature $T$ above the zero temperature quantum critical point separating the symmetry broken and unbroken phases. The commutator grows exponentially in time with a rate denoted $\lambda_L$. At large $N$ the growth of chaos as measured by $\lambda_L$ is slow because the model is weakly interacting, and we find $\lambda_L \approx 3.2 T/N$. The scaling with temperature is dictated by conformal invariance of the underlying quantum critical point. We also show that operators grow ballistically in space with a "butterfly velocity" given by $v_B/c \approx 1$ where $c$ is the Lorentz-invariant speed of particle excitations in the system. We briefly comment on the behavior of $\lambda_L$ and $v_B$ in the neighboring symmetry broken and unbroken phases.Comment: (1+55) pages, 13 figures; (v2) Final published versio