Journal of High Energy Physics (Aug 2020)
Generalized entanglement entropy, charges, and intertwiners
Abstract
Abstract The entanglement theory in quantum systems with internal symmetries is rich due to the spontaneous creation of entangled pairs of charge/anti-charge particles at the entangling surface. We call these pair creation operators the bi-local intertwiners because of the role they play in the representation theory of the symmetry group. We define a generalized measure of entanglement entropy as a measure of information erased under restriction to a subspace of observables. We argue that the correct entanglement measure in the presence of charges is the sum of two terms; one measuring the entanglement of charge- neutral operators, and the other measuring the contribution of the bi-local intertwiners. Our expression is unambiguously defined in lattice models as well in quantum field theory (QFT). We use the Tomita-Takesaki modular theory to highlight the differences between QFT and lattice models, and discuss an extension of the algebra of QFT that leads to a factorization of the charged modes.
Keywords