Entanglement growth after a global quench in free scalar field theory

We compute the entanglement and Rényi entropy growth after a global quench in various dimensions in free scalar field theory. We study two types of quenches: a boundary state quench and a global mass quench. Both of these quenches are investigated for a strip geometry in 1, 2, and 3 spatial dimensio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cotler, Jordan S., Hertzberg, Mark P., Mezei, Márk, Mueller, Mark
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
Format: Article
Published: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/108612
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0245-3364
Description
Summary:We compute the entanglement and Rényi entropy growth after a global quench in various dimensions in free scalar field theory. We study two types of quenches: a boundary state quench and a global mass quench. Both of these quenches are investigated for a strip geometry in 1, 2, and 3 spatial dimensions, and for a spherical geometry in 2 and 3 spatial dimensions. We compare the numerical results for massless free scalars in these geometries with the predictions of the analytical quasiparticle model based on EPR pairs, and find excellent agreement in the limit of large region sizes. At subleading order in the region size, we observe an anomalous logarithmic growth of entanglement coming from the zero mode of the scalar.