From Area Law to Extensive Entanglement Entropy in a New Quantum Phase Transition

by Prof. Jianda Wu (Tsung-Dao Lee Institute)

Monday 18 Mar 2019, 13:30 → 15:20 Asia/Shanghai

TDLI Meeting Room 200

Abstract

We introduce a continuous family of frustration-free Hamiltonians with exactly solvable ground states. We prove that the {ground state of our model is non-degenerate and exhibits} a novel quantum phase transition from bounded entanglement entropy to a massively entangled state with volume entropy scaling. The ground state may be interpreted as a deformation away from the uniform superposition of colored Motzkin paths, showed by Movassagh and Shor to have a large (square-root) but sub-extensive scaling of entanglement into a state with an extensive entropy.

Biography

Dr. Zhang completed his BS degree at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2012. Then he obtained PhD at University of Virginia in 2017, after which he worked there briefly as a research associate. Dr. Zhang's research focuses on studying topological phases of matter, entanglement entropy and low dimensional lattice models using exact analytical methods. He has publications in PNAS, PRB, etc. 

Division

Condensed Matter