An entropic characterization of Haag duality

Abstract

Motivated by Haag duality in quantum spin systems, we show that Haag duality for a pair of commuting factors generated by increasing sequences of finite-dimensional matrix algebras is equivalent to the asymptotic vanishing of a suitable conditional mutual information. For two-dimensional spin systems, let an annulus separate a finite region from the exterior. Haag duality then holds for a region $A$ if and only if the mutual information of the inner region and the exterior, conditioned on the part of $A$ inside the annulus, vanishes as the outer radius becomes large. As a corollary, assuming a strict area law with subleading corrections, Haag duality holds for single cones, and it holds for unions of two or more disjoint cones precisely when the topological entanglement entropy vanishes. For translation-invariant pure states on spin chains, half-chain Haag duality is equivalent to vanishing entropy density.