Impurity Entanglement Entropy and the Kondo Screening Cloud

Abstract

The screening of an impurity spin by conduction electrons is associated with the formation of a large Kondo screening cloud, of size xi_K. We study the quantum entanglement between a region of size r surrounding the impurity and the rest of the sample, (of total size R) using Density Matrix Renormalization Group and analytic methods. The corresponding "impurity entanglement entropy", S_{imp}, is shown to be a universal scaling function of r/xi_K and r/R. We calculate this universal function using Fermi liquid theory in the regime xi_K << r.