Entanglement entropy distribution in the strongly disordered one-dimensional Anderson mode

Abstract

The entanglement entropy (EE) distribution of strongly disordered one dimensional spin chains, which are equivalent to spinless fermions at half-filling on a bond (hopping) disordered one-dimensional Anderson model, has been shown to exhibit very distinct features such as peaks at integer multiplications of , essentially counting the number of singlets traversing the boundary. Here we show that for a canonical Anderson model with box distribution on-site disorder and repulsive nearest-neighbor interactions the EE distribution also exhibits interesting features, albeit different than the distribution seen for the bond disordered Anderson model. The canonical Anderson model shows a broad peak at low entanglement values and one narrower peak at . Density matrix renormalization group calculations reveal this structure and the influence of the disorder strength and the interaction strength on its shape. A modified real space renormalization group method was used to get a better understanding of this behavior. As might be expected the peak centered at low values of EE has a tendency to shift to lower values as disorder is enhanced. A second peak appears around the EE value of , this peak is broadened and no additional peaks at higher integer multiplications of are seen. We attribute the differences in the distribution between the canonical model and the broad hopping disorder to the influence of the on-site disorder which breaks the symmetry across the boundary.