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QUANTUM PHYSICS

Entanglement spread is bounded by area

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 1278–1279 (2022)Cite this article

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Limits on the quantum entanglement entropy in one dimension have been a key factor in understanding the physics of many-body systems. A bound that applies in any dimension has now been derived for a different measure known as entanglement spread.

At low temperatures, the properties of quantum many-body systems are determined by the quantum ground state. As a result, the study of ground states is connected to central problems in condensed-matter physics, for example low-temperature properties and identifying phases of matter. Classical methods are not always sufficient to describe the nature of these states, and this is especially true for more exotic phases with significant quantum effects. In such cases, analysing entanglement using quantum information concepts has played a crucial role in characterizing the physical properties of quantum many-body systems. However, insights into the nature of entanglement are often limited to special cases such as one-dimensional models. Now, as they report in Nature Physics, Anurag Anshu and co-workers have derived a limit to the entanglement of ground states for quantum systems in any spatial dimension1.

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Fig. 1: Partioning a system defined on a graph.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EHU Quantum Center, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Leioa, Spain

    Enrique Rico Ortega

  2. Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “G. Galilei” & Padua Quantum Technologies Research Center, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy

    Simone Montangero

Authors
  1. Enrique Rico Ortega
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  2. Simone Montangero
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Correspondence to Enrique Rico Ortega or Simone Montangero.

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The authors declare no competing interests

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Rico Ortega, E., Montangero, S. Entanglement spread is bounded by area. Nat. Phys. 18, 1278–1279 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01739-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01739-0

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