Smallest eigenvalue distribution of the fixed-trace Laguerre beta-ensemble

Abstract

In this paper we study the entanglement of the reduced density matrix of a bipartite quantum system in a random pure state. It transpires that this involves the computation of the smallest eigenvalue distribution of the fixed-trace Laguerre ensemble of N × N random matrices. We showed that for finite N the smallest eigenvalue distribution may be expressed in terms of Jack polynomials. Furthermore, based on the exact results, we found a limiting distribution when the smallest eigenvalue is suitably scaled with N followed by a large N limit. Our results turn out to be the same as the smallest eigenvalue distribution of the classical Laguerre ensembles without the fixed-trace constraint. This suggests in a broad sense, the global constraint does not influence local correlations, at least, in the large N limit. Consequently, we have solved an open problem: the determination of the smallest eigenvalue distribution of the reduced density matrix—obtained by tracing out the environmental degrees of freedom—for a bipartite quantum system of unequal dimensions.