Corso di laurea magistrale in Fisica

In a composite system, the entanglement entropy provides a measure of quantum entanglement, which is one of the characterizing features of quantum physical systems, with no counterpart in classical physics. Given the reduced density matrix encoding the information about one of the components of a bipartite system, the entanglement entropy is often defined in terms of the associated von Neumann entropy, or, equivalently, through a limit of the Rényi entropy. For strongly coupled systems, including some that are relevant for condensed matter systems or for fundamental fields in elementary-particle theory, the computation of the entanglement entropy is a daunting task: analytical methods can be applied only in the presence of a high degree of symmetry and in low dimensions, and also numerical methods face particularly difficult challenges.
In this thesis project, after obtaining the necessary theoretical background, the student will proceed to the formulation of a computational algorithm to estimate numerically the entanglement entropy by means of Monte Carlo calculations in a non-equilibrium formalism that rests on Jarzynski's theorem, and to its concrete implementation in the Ising model.