Israel Klich

Entanglement entropy of fermions in any dimension and the Widom conjecture.

We show that entanglement entropy of free fermions scales faster than area law, as opposed to the scaling L(d-1) for the harmonic lattice, for example. We also suggest and provide evidence in support of an explicit formula for the entanglement entropy of free fermions in any dimension d, S approximately c(deltagamma, deltaomega)L(d-1) logL as the size of a subsystem L-->infinity, where deltagamma is the Fermi surface and is the boundary of the region in real space. The expression for the constant c(deltagamma, deltaomega) is based on a conjecture due to Widom. We prove that a similar expression holds for the particle number fluctuations and use it to prove a two sided estimate on the entropy S.

Entanglement temperature and entanglement entropy of excited states

A bstractWe derive a general relation between the ground state entanglement Hamiltonian and the physical stress tensor within the path integral formalism. For spherical entangling surfaces in a CFT, we reproduce the local ground state entanglement Hamiltonian derived by Casini, Huerta and Myers. The resulting reduced density matrix can be characterized by a spatially varying “entanglement temperature”. Using the entanglement Hamiltonian, we calculate the first order change in the entanglement entropy due to changes in conserved charges of the ground state, and find a local first law-like relation for the entanglement entropy. Our approach provides a field theory derivation and generalization of recent results obtained by holographic techniques. However, we note a discrepancy between our field theoretically derived results for the entanglement entropy of excited states with a non-uniform energy density and current holographic results in the literature. Finally, we give a CFT derivation of a set of constraint equations obeyed by the entanglement entropy of excited states in any dimension. Previously, these equations were derived in the context of holography.

Quantum noise as an entanglement meter.

Transport in a quantum point contact (QPC) can be used to generate many-body entanglement of Fermi seas in the leads. A universal relation is found between the generated entanglement entropy and the fluctuations of electric current, which is valid for any protocol of driving the QPC. This relation offers a basis for direct electric measurement of entanglement entropy. In particular, by utilizing space-time duality of 1D systems, we relate electric noise generated by opening and closing the QPC periodically in time with the seminal S=1/3logL prediction of conformal field theory.

Opposites Attract: A Theorem about the Casimir Force

We consider the Casimir interaction between (nonmagnetic) dielectric bodies or conductors. Our main result is a proof that the Casimir force between two bodies related by reflection is always attractive, independent of the exact form of the bodies or dielectric properties. Apart from being a fundamental property of fields, the theorem and its corollaries also rule out a class of suggestions to obtain repulsive forces, such as the two hemisphere repulsion suggestion and its relatives.

Minimal Excitation States of Electrons in One-Dimensional Wires

A strategy is proposed to excite particles from a Fermi sea in a noise-free fashion by electromagnetic pulses with realistic parameters. We show that by using quantized pulses of simple form one can suppress the particle-hole pairs which are created by a generic excitation. The resulting many-body states are characterized by one or several particles excited above the Fermi surface accompanied by no disturbance below it. These excitations carry charge which is integer for noninteracting electron gas and fractional for Luttinger liquid. The operator algebra describing these excitations is derived, and a method of their detection which relies on noise measurement is proposed.

Casimir forces in a T operator approach

We explore the scattering approach to Casimir forces. Our main tool is the description of Casimir energy in terms of transition operators. The approach is valid for scalar fields as well as for electromagnetic fields. We provide several equivalent derivations of the formula presented by Kenneth and Klich [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 160401 (2006)]. We study the convergence properties of the formula and how to utilize it together with scattering data to compute the force. Next, we discuss the form of the formula in special cases such as the simplified form obtained when a single object is placed next to a mirror. We illustrate the approach by describing the force between scatterers in one dimension and three dimensions, where we obtain the interaction energy between two spherical bodies at all distances. We also consider the cases of scalar Casimir effect between spherical bodies with different radii as well as different dielectric functions.

Fredholm Determinants and the Statistics of Charge Transport

Using operator algebraic methods we show that the moment generating function of charge transport in a system with infinitely many non-interacting Fermions is given by a determinant of a certain operator in the one-particle Hilbert space. The formula is equivalent to a formula of Levitov and Lesovik in the finite dimensional case and may be viewed as its regularized form in general. Our result embodies two tenets often realized in mesoscopic physics, namely, that the transport properties are essentially independent of the length of the leads and of the depth of the Fermi sea.

Model characterization of gapless edge modes of topological insulators using intermediate Brillouin-zone functions.

We characterize gapless edge modes in translation invariant topological insulators. We show that the edge mode spectrum is a continuous deformation of the spectrum of a certain gluing function defining the occupied state bundle over the Brillouin zone (BZ). Topologically non-trivial gluing functions, corresponding to non-trivial bundles, then yield edge modes exhibiting spectral flow. We illustrate our results for the case of chiral edge states in two dimensional Chern insulators, as well as helical edges in quantum spin Hall states.

Lower entropy bounds and particle number fluctuations in a Fermi sea

In this letter we demonstrate, in an elementary manner, that given a partition of the single particle Hilbert space into orthogonal subspaces, a Fermi sea may be factored into pairs of entangled modes, similar to a BCS state. We derive expressions for the entropy and for the particle number fluctuations of a subspace of a Fermi sea, at zero and finite temperatures, and relate these by a lower bound on the entropy. As an application we investigate analytically and numerically these quantities for electrons in the lowest Landau level of a quantum Hall sample.

Lieb-Robinson bounds for commutator-bounded operators

We generalize the Lieb-Robinson theorem to systems whose Hamiltonian is the sum of local operators whose commutators are bounded.