Mutual information in heavy-fermion systems

Abstract

A key notion in heavy-fermion systems is the entanglement between conduction electrons and localized spin degrees of freedom. To study these systems from this point of view, we compute the mutual information in a ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic Kondo lattice model in the presence of geometrical frustration. Here the interplay between the Kondo effect, the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction, and geometrical frustration leads to partial Kondo screened, conventional Kondo insulating, and antiferromagnetic phases. In each of these states the mutual information follows an area law, the coefficient of which shows sharp crossovers (on our finite lattices) across phase transitions. Deep in the respective phases, the area law coefficient can be understood in terms of simple direct product wave functions thereby yielding an accurate measure of the entanglement in each phase. The above-mentioned results stem from approximation-free auxiliary field quantum Monte Carlo simulations.