Entanglement entropy scaling of the XXZ chain

Abstract

We study the entanglement entropy scaling of the XXZ chain. While in the critical XY phase of the XXZ chain the entanglement entropy scales logarithmically with a coefficient that is determined by the associated conformal field theory, at the ferromagnetic point, however, the system is not conformally invariant yet the entanglement entropy still scales logarithmically albeit with a different coefficient. We investigate how such a nontrivial scaling at the ferromagnetic point influences the estimation of the central charge c in the critical XY phase. In particular, we use the entanglement scaling of the finite or infinite system, as well as the finite-size scaling of the ground state energy to estimate the value of c. In addition, the spin-wave velocity and the scaling dimension are also estimated. We show that in all methods the evaluations are influenced by the nearby ferromagnetic point and result in crossover behavior. Finally we discuss how to determine whether the central charge estimation is strongly influenced by the crossover behavior and how to properly evaluate the central charge. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA Medialab srl.