Disentangling sources of quantum entanglement in quench dynamics

Abstract

Quantum entanglement may have various origins ranging from solely interaction-driven quantum correlations to single-particle effects. Here, we explore the dependence of entanglement on time-dependent single-particle basis transformations in fermionic quantum many-body systems, thus aiming at isolating single-particle sources of entanglement growth in quench dynamics. Using exact diagonalization methods, for paradigmatic nonintegrable models we compare to the standard real-space cut various physically motivated bipartitions. Moreover, we search for a minimal entanglement basis using local optimization algorithms, which at short to intermediate postquench times yields a significant reduction of entanglement beyond a dynamical Hartree-Fock solution. In the long-time limit, we identify an asymptotic universality of entanglement for weakly interacting systems, as well as a crossover from dominant real-space to momentum-space entanglement in Hubbard models undergoing an interaction quench. Finally, we discuss the relevance of our findings for the development of tensor-network-based algorithms for quantum dynamics.