Rényi entropies after releasing the Néel state in the XXZ spin-chain

Abstract

We study the Rényi entropies in the spin- anisotropic Heisenberg chain after a quantum quench starting from the Néel state. The quench action method allows us to obtain the stationary Rényi entropies for arbitrary values of the index α as generalised free energies evaluated over a calculable thermodynamic macrostate depending on α. We work out this macrostate for several values of α and of the anisotropy Δ by solving the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz equations. By varying α different regions of the Hamiltonian spectrum are accessed. The two extremes are for which the thermodynamic macrostate is either the ground state or a low-lying excited state (depending on Δ) and when the macrostate is the infinite temperature state. The Rényi entropies are easily obtained from the macrostate as function of α and a few interesting limits are analytically characterised. We provide robust numerical evidence to confirm our results using exact diagonalisation and a stochastic numerical implementation of Bethe ansatz. Finally, using tDMRG we calculate the time evolution of the Rényi entanglement entropies. For large subsystems and for any α, their density turns out to be compatible with that of the thermodynamic Rényi entropies.