Entanglement area law in superfluid helium-4

This talk will have quantum information connections.

 

Area laws were first discovered by Bekenstein and Hawking,

who found that the entropy of a black hole grows proportional to its

surface area, and not its volume. Entropy area laws have since become

a fundamental part of modern physics, from the holographic principle

in quantum gravity to ground state wavefunctions of quantum matter,

where entanglement entropy is generically found to obey area law

scaling. As no experiments are currently capable of directly probing

the entanglement area law in naturally occurring many-body systems,

evidence of its existence is based on studies of simplified theories.

Using new exact microscopic numerical simulations of superfluid

helium-4  we demonstrate for the first time an area law scaling of

entanglement entropy in a real quantum liquid in three dimensions. We

validate the fundamental principles underlying its physical origin,

and present an "entanglement equation of state" showing how it

depends on the density of the superfluid.