Entanglement from density measurements: analytical density-functional for the entanglement of strongly correlated fermions

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical density functional for single-site entanglement in the 1D Hubbard model, enabling accurate entanglement predictions from density measurements, applicable to inhomogeneous and disordered systems.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, accurate density functional for entanglement in strongly correlated fermions, usable for inhomogeneous and disordered systems, validated against numerical results.

Findings

Quantitative agreement with numerical calculations.

Functional reproduces subtle density signatures.

Entanglement remains robust against certain disorder regimes.

Abstract

We derive an analytical density functional for the single-site entanglement of the one-dimensional homogeneous Hubbard model, by means of an approximation to the linear entropy. We show that this very simple density functional reproduces quantitatively the exact results. We then use this functional as input for a local density approximation to the single-site entanglement of inhomogeneous systems. We illustrate the power of this approach in a harmonically confined system, which could simulate recent experiments with ultracold atoms in optical lattices as well as in a superlattice and in an impurity system. The impressive quantitative agreement with numerical calculations -- which includes reproducing subtle signatures of the particle density stages -- shows that our density-functional can provide entanglement calculations for actual experiments via density measurements. Next we use our functional to calculate the entanglement in disordered systems. We find that, at contrast with the expectation that disorder destroys the entanglement, there exist regimes for which the entanglement remains almost unaffected by the presence of disordered impurities.