Entropy, entanglement, and area: analytical results for harmonic lattice systems

M. B. Plenio, J. Eisert, J. Dreissig, M. Cramer

Published 2004-05-25, updated 2005-02-23Version 3

We revisit the question of the relation between entanglement, entropy, and area for harmonic lattice Hamiltonians corresponding to discrete versions of real free Klein-Gordon fields. For the ground state of the d-dimensional cubic harmonic lattice we establish a strict relationship between the surface area of a distinguished hypercube and the degree of entanglement between the hypercube and the rest of the lattice analytically, without resorting to numerical means. We outline extensions of these results to longer ranged interactions, finite temperatures and for classical correlations in classical harmonic lattice systems. These findings further suggest that the tools of quantum information science may help in establishing results in quantum field theory that were previously less accessible.