New insights into the entanglement of disjoint blocks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the entanglement properties of two disjoint blocks in spin-1/2 chains, revealing that certain universal functions derived from Rényi entropies can be negative, contrasting previous findings.

Contribution

It introduces new insights into the universal quantities of entanglement in disjoint blocks, including the computation of F_2 and the discovery of negative values for some functions, and establishes a relation between XX and quantum Ising models.

Findings

F_2 computed explicitly

F_α-1 and F_{v.N.} can be negative

Relation between XX and quantum Ising models established

Abstract

We study the entanglement of two disjoint blocks in spin-1/2 chains obtained by merging solvable models, such as XX and quantum Ising models. We focus on the universal quantities that can be extracted from the R\'enyi entropies S_\alpha. The most important information is encoded in some functions denoted by F_\alpha. We compute F_2 and we show that F_\alpha-1 and F_{v.N.}, corresponding to the von Neumann entropy, can be negative, in contrast to what observed in all models examined so far. An exact relation between the entanglement of disjoint subsystems in the XX model and that in a chain embodying two quantum Ising models is a by-product of our investigations.