Entanglement measures and the quantum to classical mapping

TL;DR

This paper introduces a finite-temperature correlation measure based on a reduced density matrix obtained by cutting a classical model along the imaginary time axis, revealing properties of quantum entanglement and its relation to classical models.

Contribution

It proposes a new entanglement measure at finite temperature based on imaginary-time cuts and analyzes its properties in quantum systems, connecting to classical models and free-fermion spectra.

Findings

S_ent is non-extensive at all temperatures in 1D quantum systems.

Entanglement spectra at T->0 are described by free-fermion Hamiltonians.

The measure simplifies calculations compared to mutual information.

Abstract

A quantum model can be mapped to a classical model in one higher dimension. Here we introduce a finite-temperature correlation measure based on a reduced density matrix rho_A obtained by cutting the classical system along the imaginary time (inverse temperature) axis. We show that the von-Neumann entropy S_ent of rho_A shares many properties with the mutual information, yet is based on a simpler geometry and is thus easier to calculate. For one-dimensional quantum systems in the thermodynamic limit we proof that S_ent is non-extensive for all temperatures T. For the integrable transverse Ising and XXZ models we demonstrate that the entanglement spectra of rho_A in the limit T-> 0 are described by free-fermion Hamiltonians and reduce to those of the regular reduced density matrix---obtained by a spatial instead of an imaginary-time cut---up to degeneracies.