Entanglement and separability in continuum Rokhsar-Kivelson states

Abstract

We study a vast family of continuum Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) states, which have their ground state encoded by a local quantum field theory. These describe certain quantum magnets, and are also important in quantum information. We prove the separability of the reduced density matrix of two disconnected subsystems, implying the absence of entanglement between the two subsystems---a stronger statement than the vanishing of logarithmic negativity. As a particular instance, we investigate the case where the ground state is described by a relativistic boson, which is relevant for certain magnets or Lifshitz critical points with dynamical exponent $z=2$, and we propose nontrivial deformations that preserve their RK structure. Specializing to 1D systems, we study a deformation that maps the ground state to the quantum harmonic oscillator, leading to a gap for the boson. We study the resulting correlation functions, and find that cluster decomposition is restored. We analytically compute the $c$ function for the entanglement entropy along a renormalization group flow for the wavefunction, which is found to be strictly decreasing as in CFTs. Finally, we comment on the relations to certain stoquastic quantum spin chains. We show that the Motzkin and Fredkin chains possess unusual entanglement properties not properly captured by previous studies.