Entanglement signature of fully and partially dimerized phases in frustrated spin chains

TL;DR

This study analyzes entanglement entropy in frustrated spin chains, revealing distinct signatures for fully and partially dimerized phases, and demonstrating its effectiveness in characterizing bond structures.

Contribution

It provides a detailed entanglement entropy analysis of valence-bond ground states in frustrated spin chains, distinguishing different dimerization patterns and bond architectures.

Findings

Entropy saturates to a finite constant in all phases, confirming area-law behavior.

MG and FD phases show similar entanglement behavior with differences in saturation magnitude.

PD phase exhibits multiple saturation values and a multi-band structure in pairwise entropy.

Abstract

The von Neumann entanglement entropy of exact valence-bond ground states is studied in two frustrated one-dimensional spin chains: the spin-1/2 Majumdar-Ghosh (MG) model and the spin-3/2 J1-J2-J3 chain in its fully dimerized (FD) and partially dimerized (PD) phases. Using matrix-product-state representations, the entropy is computed as a function of system size for three complementary bipartitions - half-chain, single-site, and pairwise - under both open and periodic boundary conditions. In all cases, the entropy saturates to a finite constant in the thermodynamic limit, confirming area-law behavior. The saturation values, extracted via finite-size scaling, are directly related to the underlying virtual-spin bond structure. The MG model and FD phase exhibit similar entanglement behavior, differing primarily in saturation magnitude determined by spin value and bond multiplicity, and both display even-odd oscillations and exponential convergence with system size. In contrast, the PD phase shows qualitatively distinct signatures, including multiple half-chain saturation values depending on the bond type at the cut, asymmetric edge contributions in the single-site entropy, and a multi-band structure in the pairwise entropy reflecting the coexistence of single- and double-singlet bonds. These results establish entanglement entropy as a robust signature of frustrated bond architecture, enabling clear distinction among dimerized phases with different spin magnitude, bond multiplicity, and dimerization patterns.