Entanglement scaling behaviors of free fermions on hyperbolic lattices

TL;DR

This study explores how entanglement entropy scales in free fermion systems on hyperbolic lattices, revealing that despite geometric differences, EE still follows an area law, with implications for understanding quantum phases in curved spaces.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical analysis of entanglement entropy scaling on hyperbolic lattices, extending quantum information insights to non-Euclidean geometries.

Findings

EE adheres to the area law on hyperbolic lattices.

Hyperbolic geometry influences the entanglement scaling behavior.

The coefficient of the area law relates to bulk gap and DOS.

Abstract

Recently, tight-binding models on hyperbolic lattices (discretized AdS space) have gained significant attention, leading to hyperbolic band theory and non-Abelian Bloch states. In this paper, we investigate these quantum systems from the perspective of quantum information, focusing particularly on the scaling of entanglement entropy (EE) that has been regarded as a powerful quantum-information probe into exotic phases of matter. It is known that on $d$-dimensional translation-invariant Euclidean lattice, the EE of band insulators scales as an area law ($\sim L^{d-1}$; $L$ is the linear size of the boundary between two subsystems). Meanwhile, the EE of metals (with finite Density-of-State, i.e., DOS) scales as the renowned Gioev-Klich-Widom scaling law ($\sim L^{d-1}\log L$). The appearance of logarithmic divergence, as well as the analytic form of the coefficient $c$ is mathematically controlled by the Widom conjecture of asymptotic behavior of Toeplitz matrices and can be physically understood via the Swingle's argument. However, the hyperbolic lattice, which generalizes translational symmetry, results in inapplicability of these analytic approaches and the potential non-trivial behavior of EE. Here we make an initial attempt through numerical simulation. Remarkably, we find that both cases adhere to the area law, indicating the effect of background hyperbolic geometry that influences quantum entanglement. To achieve the results, we first apply the vertex inflation method to generate hyperbolic lattice on the Poincar\'{e} disk, and then apply the Haydock recursion method to compute DOS. Finally, we study the scaling of EE for different bipartitions via exact diagonalization and perform finite-size scaling. We also investigate how the coefficient of the area law is correlated to bulk gap in gapped case and to the DOS in gapless case respectively. Future directions are discussed.