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Symmetry-enforced minimal entanglement and correlation in quantum spin chains

Kangle Li, Liujun Zou

SciPost Phys. 19, 020 (2025) · published 17 July 2025

Abstract

The interplay between symmetry, entanglement and correlation is an interesting and important topic in quantum many-body physics. Within the framework of matrix product states, in this paper we study the minimal entanglement and correlation enforced by the SO(3) spin rotation symmetry and lattice translation symmetry in a quantum spin-J chain, with J a positive integer. When neither symmetry is spontaneously broken, for a sufficiently long segment in a sufficiently large closed chain, we find that the minimal Rényi-α entropy compatible with these symmetries is min{2α1ln(12α(1+1(2J+1)α1)),2ln(J+1)}, for any αR+. In an infinitely long open chain with such symmetries, for any αR+ the minimal Rényi-α entropy of half of the system is min{1α1ln(12α(1+1(2J+1)α1)),ln(J+1)}. When α1, these lower bounds give the symmetry-enforced minimal von Neumann entropies in these setups. Moreover, we show that no state in a quantum spin-J chain with these symmetries can have a vanishing correlation length. Interestingly, the states with the minimal entanglement may not be a state with the minimal correlation length.


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