Entanglement asymmetry in CFT and its relation to non-topological defects

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Fossati, Michele, Ares, Filiberto, Dubail, Jerome, Calabrese, Pasquale
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Fossati, Michele
Ares, Filiberto
Dubail, Jerome
Calabrese, Pasquale
author_facet Fossati, Michele
Ares, Filiberto
Dubail, Jerome
Calabrese, Pasquale
contents The entanglement asymmetry is an information based observable that quantifies the degree of symmetry breaking in a region of an extended quantum system. We investigate this measure in the ground state of one dimensional critical systems described by a CFT. Employing the correspondence between global symmetries and defects, the analysis of the entanglement asymmetry can be formulated in terms of partition functions on Riemann surfaces with multiple non-topological defect lines inserted at their branch cuts. For large subsystems, these partition functions are determined by the scaling dimension of the defects. This leads to our first main observation: at criticality, the entanglement asymmetry acquires a subleading contribution scaling as $\log \ell / \ell$ for large subsystem length $\ell$. Then, as an illustrative example, we consider the XY spin chain, which has a critical line described by the massless Majorana fermion theory and explicitly breaks the $U(1)$ symmetry associated with rotations about the $z$-axis. In this situation the corresponding defect is marginal. Leveraging conformal invariance, we relate the scaling dimension of these defects to the ground state energy of the massless Majorana fermion on a circle with equally-spaced point defects. We exploit this mapping to derive our second main result: the exact expression for the scaling dimension associated with $n$ of defects of arbitrary strengths. Our result generalizes a known formula for the $n=1$ case derived in several previous works. We then use this exact scaling dimension to derive our third main result: the exact prefactor of the $\log \ell/\ell$ term in the asymmetry of the critical XY chain.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_03446
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Entanglement asymmetry in CFT and its relation to non-topological defects
Fossati, Michele
Ares, Filiberto
Dubail, Jerome
Calabrese, Pasquale
High Energy Physics - Theory
Statistical Mechanics
Quantum Physics
The entanglement asymmetry is an information based observable that quantifies the degree of symmetry breaking in a region of an extended quantum system. We investigate this measure in the ground state of one dimensional critical systems described by a CFT. Employing the correspondence between global symmetries and defects, the analysis of the entanglement asymmetry can be formulated in terms of partition functions on Riemann surfaces with multiple non-topological defect lines inserted at their branch cuts. For large subsystems, these partition functions are determined by the scaling dimension of the defects. This leads to our first main observation: at criticality, the entanglement asymmetry acquires a subleading contribution scaling as $\log \ell / \ell$ for large subsystem length $\ell$. Then, as an illustrative example, we consider the XY spin chain, which has a critical line described by the massless Majorana fermion theory and explicitly breaks the $U(1)$ symmetry associated with rotations about the $z$-axis. In this situation the corresponding defect is marginal. Leveraging conformal invariance, we relate the scaling dimension of these defects to the ground state energy of the massless Majorana fermion on a circle with equally-spaced point defects. We exploit this mapping to derive our second main result: the exact expression for the scaling dimension associated with $n$ of defects of arbitrary strengths. Our result generalizes a known formula for the $n=1$ case derived in several previous works. We then use this exact scaling dimension to derive our third main result: the exact prefactor of the $\log \ell/\ell$ term in the asymmetry of the critical XY chain.
title Entanglement asymmetry in CFT and its relation to non-topological defects
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
Statistical Mechanics
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03446