Chiral Entanglement in Quantum Field Theories in 1+1 Dimensions

Seminars | Friday, November 30, 2018 | 16:30:00
Speaker:
Mate Lencses

The fixed points of the renormalization group (RG) in quantum field theory can be characterized by conformal field theories (CFTs). In 1+1 dimensions the spectrum of the CFT consists of left and right moving chiral excitations. One can consider the chiral entanglement entropy, the entanglement entropy in ground states between the left and right chiral degrees of freedom. In the fixed point CFT the chiral entanglement entropy is zero and it is finite away from criticality. Moreover, it scales linearly with the system size with a mass dependent slope in the large system limit, and contains a universal constant term, which characterizes the RG flow. Based on the variational Ansatz proposed by J. Cardy, we study the chiral entanglement entropy of ground states along massive RG flows. The analytical results are compared to numerical calculations using the truncated conformal space approach for RG flows around the Ising and tricritical Ising fixed points.