Entanglement Entropy of Eigenstates of Quadratic Fermionic Hamiltonians.

Abstract

In a seminal paper [D. N. Page, Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1291 (1993)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1291], Page proved that the average entanglement entropy of subsystems of random pure states is S_{ave}≃lnD_{A}-(1/2)D_{A}^{2}/D for 1≪D_{A}≤sqrt[D], where D_{A} and D are the Hilbert space dimensions of the subsystem and the system, respectively. Hence, typical pure states are (nearly) maximally entangled. We develop tools to compute the average entanglement entropy ⟨S⟩ of all eigenstates of quadratic fermionic Hamiltonians. In particular, we derive exact bounds for the most general translationally invariant models lnD_{A}-(lnD_{A})^{2}/lnD≤⟨S⟩≤lnD_{A}-[1/(2ln2)](lnD_{A})^{2}/lnD. Consequently, we prove that (i)if the subsystem size is a finite fraction of the system size, then ⟨S⟩<lnD_{A} in the thermodynamic limit; i.e., the average over eigenstates of the Hamiltonian departs from the result for typical pure states, and (ii)in the limit in which the subsystem size is a vanishing fraction of the system size, the average entanglement entropy is maximal; i.e., typical eigenstates of such Hamiltonians exhibit eigenstate thermalization.