Prof John Cardy FRS

Abstract:

We show that block entanglement entropies in one-dimensional systems close to a quantum critical point can, in principle, be measured in terms of the population of low-lying energy levels following a certain type of local quantum quench.

Abstract:

We continue the study of the entanglement entropy of two disjoint intervals in conformal field theories that we started in Calabrese et al 2009 J. Stat. Mech. P11001. We compute Tr ρnA for any integer n for the Ising universality class and the final result is expressed as a sum of Riemann-Siegel theta functions. These predictions are checked against existing numerical data. We provide a systematic method that gives the full asymptotic expansion of the scaling function for small four-point ratio (i.e. short intervals). These formulas are compared with the direct expansion of the full results for a free compactified boson and Ising model. We finally provide the analytic continuation of the first term in this expansion in a completely analytic form. © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.