Entanglement signatures of phase transition in higher-derivative quantum field theories

TL;DR

This paper investigates how entanglement entropy in higher-derivative quantum field theories signals phase transitions, revealing fundamental changes in quantum correlations at critical points with implications for condensed matter, black holes, and quantum gravity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that entanglement entropy exhibits signatures of phase transitions in higher-derivative field theories, highlighting a change in the reduced density matrix at critical points.

Findings

Entanglement entropy changes scaling at the phase transition.

Signatures observed when dispersion relation shifts from linear to non-linear.

Implications for black-hole entropy and quantum gravity models.

Abstract

We show that the variation of the ground state entanglement in linear, higher spatial derivatives field theories at zero-temperature have signatures of phase transition. Around the critical point, when the dispersion relation changes from linear to non-linear, there is a fundamental change in the reduced density matrix leading to a change in the scaling of entanglement entropy. We suggest possible explanations involving both kinematical and dynamical effects. We discuss the implication of our work for 2-D condensed matter systems, black-hole entropy and models of quantum gravity.