Von Neumann Entropy Spectra and Entangled Excitations in Spin-Orbital Models

Abstract

We consider the low-energy excitations of one-dimensional spin-orbital models which consist of spin waves, orbital waves, and joint spin-orbital excitations. Among the latter we identify strongly entangled spin-orbital bound states which appear as peaks in the von Neumann entropy (vNE) spectral function introduced in this work. The strong entanglement of bound states is manifested by a universal logarithmic scaling of the vNE with system size, while the vNE of other spin-orbital excitations saturates. We suggest that spin-orbital entanglement can be experimentally explored by the measurement of the dynamical spin-orbital correlations using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, where strong spin-orbit coupling associated with the core hole plays a role.