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Entanglement Entropy in Quantum Field Theory

A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Quantum Information".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2025 | Viewed by 1369

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Mathematics, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, UK
Interests: integrable quantum field theory; entanglement measures; out-of-equilibrium dynamics; form factor programme; TBA

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Guest Editor
Department of Mathematics, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK
Interests: out-of-equilibrium dynamics of isolated quantum systems; integrable quantum field theory; conformal field theory; truncated Hilbert space methods; cold atom experiments; entanglement and its dynamics in 1 dimensional systems; symmetry-resolved entanglement; the sine-Gordon theory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

At the beginning of the 1990s, a series of works involving C. Callan, C. Holzhey, F. Larsen and F. Wilczek highlighted the universal properties of a measure of entanglement known as entanglement entropy. Their studies considered quantum corrections to black hole entropy and saw entropy in the context of geometry and gravity. Those results admitted also a more general interpretation as describing the quantum entanglement associated with quantum critical points, which in 1+1 dimensions are described by the conformal field theory (CFT). Drawing on the powerful mathematical structures underpinning CFT, it has since been possible to obtain many more universal results for a wide range of entanglement measures, ranging from the entanglement and Rényi entropies to the logarithmic negativity. There have been many contributions to this development, with the work of P. Calabrese and J. L. Cardy in 2004 playing a pivotal role in bringing these ideas to the low-dimensional quantum field theory (QFT) community. Later, this CFT viewpoint has been related to a picture emerging from the AdS/CFT correspondence, leading to the well-known relationship between entanglement entropy and the area minimal surfaces pioneered by S. Ryu and T. Takayanagi in 2006. Another frontier in this investigation has been the challenge of progressing beyond CFT, to describing universal properties of entanglement in the near-critical region described by massive QFT. For interacting integrable 1+1-dimensional QFTs, the branch point twist field approach, introduced by J.L. Cardy, O. A. Castro-Alvaredo and B. Doyon in 2007, has become a leading method to do just that. By relating entanglement measures to correlation functions of local fields, it has been possible to encapsulate the intricacies of entanglement measures into the problem of expanding multi-point correlation functions in terms of different parameters. This viewpoint has been further generalised to describe more recent entanglement measures such as the symmetry resolved entanglement, introduced by Goldstein and Sela in 2018, in terms of a composite twist field picture. The objective of this Special Issue is to bring together original contributions to this active area of research.

Dr. Olalla Castro-Alvaredo
Dr. David X. Horvath
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • entanglement measures
  • quantum field theory
  • conformal field theory
  • quantum spin chains
  • holography
  • symmetry
  • numerics
  • exact results

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 1419 KiB  
Article
Measurement-Induced Symmetry Restoration and Quantum Mpemba Effect
by Giuseppe Di Giulio, Xhek Turkeshi and Sara Murciano
Entropy 2025, 27(4), 407; https://doi.org/10.3390/e27040407 - 10 Apr 2025
Viewed by 196
Abstract
Monitoring a quantum system can profoundly alter its dynamical properties, leading to non-trivial emergent phenomena. In this work, we demonstrate that dynamical measurements strongly influence the evolution of symmetry in many-body quantum systems. Specifically, we demonstrate that monitored systems governed by non-Hermitian dynamics [...] Read more.
Monitoring a quantum system can profoundly alter its dynamical properties, leading to non-trivial emergent phenomena. In this work, we demonstrate that dynamical measurements strongly influence the evolution of symmetry in many-body quantum systems. Specifically, we demonstrate that monitored systems governed by non-Hermitian dynamics exhibit a quantum Mpemba effect, where systems with stronger initial asymmetry relax faster to a symmetric state. Crucially, this phenomenon is purely measurement-induced: in the absence of measurements, we find states where the corresponding unitary evolution does not display any Mpemba effect. Furthermore, we uncover a novel measurement-induced symmetry restoration mechanism: below a critical measurement rate, the symmetry remains broken, but beyond a threshold, it is fully restored in the thermodynamic limit—along with the emergence of the quantum Mpemba effect. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Entanglement Entropy in Quantum Field Theory)
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11 pages, 286 KiB  
Article
Entropic Order Parameters for Categorical Symmetries in 2D-CFT
by Javier Molina-Vilaplana, Pablo Saura-Bastida and Germán Sierra
Entropy 2024, 26(12), 1064; https://doi.org/10.3390/e26121064 - 6 Dec 2024
Viewed by 510
Abstract
In this work, we propose an information theoretic order parameter able to characterize the presence and breaking of categorical symmetries in (1+1)-d rational conformal field theories (RCFTs). Specifically, we compute the quantum relative entropy between the ground states [...] Read more.
In this work, we propose an information theoretic order parameter able to characterize the presence and breaking of categorical symmetries in (1+1)-d rational conformal field theories (RCFTs). Specifically, we compute the quantum relative entropy between the ground states of RCFTs representing the critical point of phase transitions between different symmetry-broken phases of theories with categorical symmetries, and their symmetrized versions. We find that, at leading order in the high temperature limit, this relative entropy only depends on the expectation values of the quantum dimensions of the topological operators implementing the categorical symmetry. This dependence suggests that our proposal can be used to characterize the different broken phases of (1+1)-d theories with categorical symmetries. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Entanglement Entropy in Quantum Field Theory)
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