Proton-neutron entanglement in the nuclear shell model

Abstract

We compute the proton-neutron entanglement entropy in the interacting nuclear shell model for a variety of nuclides and interactions. Some results make intuitive sense, for example, that the shell structure, as governed by single-particle and monopole energies, strongly affects the energetically available space and thus the entanglement entropy. We also find a surprising result: that the entanglement entropy at low excitation energy tends to decrease for nuclides when N ≠ Z. While we provide evidence this arises from the physical nuclear force by contrasting with random two-body interactions which shows no such decrease, the exact mechanism is unclear. Nonetheless, the low entanglement suggests that in models of neutron-rich nuclides, the coupling between protons and neutrons may be less computationally demanding than one might otherwise expect.