Entanglement of two blocks of spins in the critical Ising model

Abstract

We compute the entropy of entanglement of two blocks of L spins at a distance d in the ground state of an Ising chain in an external transverse magnetic field. We numerically study the von Neumann entropy for different values of the transverse field. At the critical point we obtain analytical results for blocks of size L=1 and L=2. In the general case, the critical entropy is shown to be additive when d goes to infinity. Finally, based on simple arguments, we derive an expression for the entropy at the critical point as a function of both L and d. This formula is in excellent agreement with numerical results.