Entanglement scaling and charge fluctuations in a Fermi liquid of composite fermions

Abstract

The composite fermion Fermi liquid (CFL) state at $\nu=1/2$ filling of a Landau level is a paradigmatic non-Fermi liquid borne out purely by Coulomb interactions. But in what ways is this exotic state of matter different from a Fermi liquid? The CFL entanglement entropy was indeed found to exhibit a significant enhancement compared to free electrons [Shao et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 206402 (2015)], which was subsequently ruled out as a finite-size effect by the study of a lattice CFL analog [Mishmash and Motrunich, Phys. Rev. B 94, 081110 (2016)]. Moreover, the enhancement was not observed in a quasi-one-dimensional limit of the Coulomb ground state at $\nu=1/2$ [Geraedts et al., Science 352, 197 (2016)]. Here, we revisit the problem of entanglement scaling in the CFL state realized in a two-dimensional electron gas. Using Monte Carlo evaluation of the second R\'enyi entropy $S_2$ for the CFL variational wave function, we show that the entanglement enhancement is present not only at $\nu=1/2$ but also at $\nu=1/4$, as well as in bosonic CFL states at $\nu=1$ and $\nu=1/3$ fillings. In all cases, we find the scaling of $S_2$ with subsystem size to be enhanced compared to the non-interacting case, and insensitive to the choice of geometry and projection to the lowest Landau level. We also demonstrate that, for CFL states, the variance of the particle number in a subsystem obeys area-law scaling with a universal subleading corner contribution, in stark contrast with free fermions. Our results establish the enhanced entanglement scaling and suppressed charge fluctuations as fingerprints of non-Fermi-liquid correlations in CFL states.