Entanglement entropy of fermions in any dimension and the Widom conjecture

We consider the target space entanglement in quantum mechanics of non-interacting fermions at finite temperature. Unlike pure states investigated in arXiv:2105.13726, the (R\'enyi) entanglement entropy for thermal states does not follow a simple bound because all states in the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space are involved. We investigate a general formula of the target space R\'enyi entropy for $N$ fermions at finite temperature, and present numerical results of the entropy...

The scaling of entanglement entropy is computationally studied in several $1\le d \le 2$ dimensional free fermion systems that are connected by one or more point contacts (PC). For both the $k$-leg Bethe lattice $(d =1)$ and $d=2$ rectangular lattices with a subsystem of $L^d$ sites, the entanglement entropy associated with a {\sl single} PC is found to be generically $S \sim L$. We argue that the $O(L)$ entropy is an expression of the subdominant $O(L)$ entropy of the bulk e...

I compute the leading contribution to the ground state Renyi entropy $S_{\alpha}$ for a region of linear size $L$ in a Fermi liquid. The result contains a universal boundary law violating term simply related the more familiar entanglement entropy. I also obtain a universal crossover function that smoothly interpolates between the zero temperature result and the ordinary thermal Renyi entropy of a Fermi liquid. Formulas for the entanglement entropy of more complicated regions,...

It is often observed in the ground state of spatially-extended quantum systems with local interactions that the entropy of a large region is proportional to its surface area. In some cases, this area law is corrected with a logarithmic factor. This contrasts with the fact that in almost all states of the Hilbert space, the entropy of a region is proportional to its volume. This paper shows that low-energy states have (at most) an area law with the logarithmic correction, prov...

We report on the calculation of the symmetry resolved entanglement entropies in two-dimensional many-body systems of free bosons and fermions by \emph{dimensional reduction}. When the subsystem is translational invariant in a transverse direction, this strategy allows us to reduce the initial two-dimensional problem into decoupled one-dimensional ones in a mixed space-momentum representation. While the idea straightforwardly applies to any dimension $d$, here we focus on the ...

We study the entanglement entropy of random partitions in one- and two-dimensional critical fermionic systems. In an infinite system we consider a finite, connected (hypercubic) domain of linear extent $L$, the points of which with probability $p$ belong to the subsystem. The leading contribution to the average entanglement entropy is found to scale with the volume as $a(p) L^D$, where $a(p)$ is a non-universal function, to which there is a logarithmic correction term, $b(p)L...

We develop a first-principle approach to compute the counting statistics in the ground-state of $N$ noninteracting spinless fermions in a general potential in arbitrary dimensions $d$ (central for $d>1$). In a confining potential, the Fermi gas is supported over a bounded domain. In $d=1$, for specific potentials, this system is related to standard random matrix ensembles. We study the quantum fluctuations of the number of fermions ${\cal N}_{\cal D}$ in a domain $\cal{D}$ of...

We study the entanglement entropy and particle number cumulants for a system of disordered noninteracting fermions in $d$ dimensions. We show, both analytically and numerically, that for a weak disorder the entanglement entropy and the second cumulant (particle number variance) are proportional to each other with a universal coefficient. The corresponding expressions are analogous to those in the clean case but with a logarithmic factor regularized by the mean free path rathe...

We study the entanglement properties of non-Hermitian free fermionic models with translation symmetry using the correlation matrix technique. Our results show that the entanglement entropy has a logarithmic correction to the area law in both one-dimensional and two-dimensional systems. For any one-dimensional one-band system, we prove that each Fermi point of the system contributes exactly 1/2 to the coefficient c of the logarithmic correction. Moreover, this relation between...

Motivated by recent development of the concept of the disorder operator and its relation with entanglement entropy in bosonic systems, here we show the disorder operator successfully probes many aspects of quantum entanglement in fermionic many-body systems. From both analytical and numerical computations in free and interacting fermion systems in 1D and 2D, we find the disorder operator and the entanglement entropy exhibit similar universal scaling behavior, as a function of...