Entanglement Entropy of the nu=1/2 Composite Fermion Non-Fermi Liquid State

Abstract

The so-called “non-Fermi liquid” behavior is very common in strongly correlated systems. However, its operational definition in terms of “what it is not” is a major obstacle for the theoretical understanding of this fascinating correlated state. Recently there has been much interest in entanglement entropy as a theoretical tool to study non-Fermi liquids. So far explicit calculations have been limited to models without direct experimental realizations. Here we focus on a two-dimensional electron fluid under magnetic field and filling fraction nu = 1/2, which is believed to be a non-Fermi liquid state. Using a composite fermion wave function which captures the nu = 1/2 state very accurately, we compute the second Renyi entropy using the variational Monte Carlo technique. We find the entanglement entropy scales as L log L with the length of the boundary L as it does for free fermions, but has a prefactor twice that of free fermions.