Universal behavior of the Shannon mutual information of critical quantum chains

We consider the Shannon mutual information of subsystems of critical quantum chains in their ground states. Our results indicate a universal leading behavior for large subsystem sizes. Moreover, as happens with the entanglement entropy, its finite-size behavior yields the conformal anomaly c of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2013-07, Vol.111 (1), p.017201-017201, Article 017201
Main Authors: Alcaraz, F C, Rajabpour, M A
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We consider the Shannon mutual information of subsystems of critical quantum chains in their ground states. Our results indicate a universal leading behavior for large subsystem sizes. Moreover, as happens with the entanglement entropy, its finite-size behavior yields the conformal anomaly c of the underlying conformal field theory governing the long-distance physics of the quantum chain. We study analytically a chain of coupled harmonic oscillators and numerically the Q-state Potts models (Q=2, 3, and 4), the XXZ quantum chain, and the spin-1 Fateev-Zamolodchikov model. The Shannon mutual information is a quantity easily computed, and our results indicate that for relatively small lattice sizes, its finite-size behavior already detects the universality class of quantum critical behavior.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.111.017201