Interpreting the von Neumann entropy of graph Laplacians, and coentropic graphs

Abstract

For any graph, we define a rank-1 operator on a bipartite tensor product space, with components associated to the set of vertices and edges respectively. We show that the partial traces of the operator are the Laplacian and the edge-Laplacian. This provides an interpretation of the von Neumann entropy of the (normalized)\ Laplacian as the amount of quantum entanglement between two systems corresponding to vertices and edges. In this framework, cospectral graphs correspond exactly to local unitarily equivalent pure states. Finally, we introduce the notion of coentropic graphs, that is, graphs with equal von Neumann entropy. The smallest coentropic (but not cospectral) graphs that we are able to construct have 8 vertices. The number of equivalence classes of coentropic graphs with n vertices and m edges is a lower bound to the number of (pure) bipartite entanglement classes with subsystems of corresponding dimension.