Large-scale behaviour of local and entanglement entropy of the free Fermi gas at any temperature

TL;DR

This paper rigorously analyzes the large-scale behavior of entanglement entropy in a free Fermi gas at finite temperature, revealing a complex integral form and a logarithmic divergence as temperature approaches zero, extending known zero-temperature results.

Contribution

First rigorous derivation of the large-scale entanglement entropy for thermal states of a free Fermi gas at T>0, including a detailed semiclassical trace formula.

Findings

Thermal entanglement entropy is twice the finite-size correction to thermal entropy.

At zero temperature, the entropy exhibits a ln(1/T) divergence.

The leading term simplifies at T=0, confirming area-law scaling with logarithmic enhancement.

Abstract

The leading asymptotic large-scale behaviour of the spatially bipartite entanglement entropy (EE) of the free Fermi gas infinitely extended in multidimensional Euclidean space at zero absolute temperature, T=0, is by now well understood. Here, we present and discuss the first rigorous results for the corresponding EE of thermal equilibrium states at T>0. The leading large-scale term of this thermal EE turns out to be twice the first-order finite-size correction to the infinite-volume thermal entropy (density). Not surprisingly, this correction is just the thermal entropy on the interface of the bipartition. However, it is given by a rather complicated integral derived from a semiclassical trace formula for a certain operator on the underlying one-particle Hilbert space. But in the zero-temperature limit the leading large-scale term of the thermal EE considerably simplifies and displays a ln(1/T)-singularity which one may identify with the known logarithmic enhancement at T=0 of the so-called area-law scaling.