Entanglement Entropy of Free Fermions in Timelike Slices

Abstract

We define the entanglement entropy of free fermion quantum states in an arbitrary spacetime slice of a discrete set of points, and particularly investigate timelike (causal) slices. For 1D lattice free fermions with an energy bandwidth $E_0$, we calculate the time-direction entanglement entropy $S_A$ in a time-direction slice of a set of times $t_n=n\tau$ ($1\le n\le K$) spanning a time length $t$ on the same site. For zero temperature ground states, we find that $S_A$ shows volume law when $\tau\gg\tau_0=2\pi/E_0$; in contrast, $S_A\sim \frac{1}{3}\ln t$ when $\tau=\tau_0$, and $S_A\sim\frac{1}{6}\ln t$ when $\tau<\tau_0$, resembling the Calabrese-Cardy formula for one flavor of nonchiral and chiral fermion, respectively. For finite temperature thermal states, the mutual information also saturates when $\tau<\tau_0$. For non-eigenstates, volume law in $t$ and signatures of the Lieb-Robinson bound velocity can be observed in $S_A$. For generic spacetime slices with one point per site, the zero temperature entanglement entropy shows a clear transition from area law to volume law when the slice varies from spacelike to timelike.