Scaling of R\'enyi entanglement entropies of the free Fermi-gas ground state: a rigorous proof

Abstract

In a remarkable paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 100503 (2006)], Dimitri Gioev and Israel Klich conjectured an explicit formula for the leading asymptotic growth of the spatially bi-partite von-Neumann entanglement entropy of non-interacting fermions in multi-dimensional Euclidean space at zero temperature. Based on recent progress by one of us (A.V.S.) in semi-classical functional calculus for pseudo-differential operators with discontinuous symbols, we provide here a complete proof of that formula and of its generalization to R\'enyi entropies of all orders $\alpha>0$. The special case $\alpha=1/2$ is also known under the name logarithmic negativity and often considered to be a particularly useful quantification of entanglement. These formulas, exhibiting a "logarithmically enhanced area law", have been used already in many publications.