Entanglement entropy between virtual and real excitations in quantum electrodynamics

Abstract

The aim of this work is to introduce the entanglement entropy of real and virtual excitations of fermion and photon fields. By rewriting the generating functional of quantum electrodynamics theory as an inner product between quantum operators, it is possible to obtain quantum density operators representing the propagation of real and virtual particles. These operators are partial traces, where the degrees of freedom traced out are unobserved excitations. Then the von Neumann definition of entropy can be applied to these quantum operators and in particular, for the partial traces taken over by the internal or external degrees of freedom. A universal behavior is obtained for the entanglement entropy for different quantum fields at zeroth order in the coupling constant. In order to obtain numerical results at different orders in the perturbation expansion, the Bloch–Nordsieck model is considered, where it is shown that for some particular values of the electric charge, the von Neumann entropy increases or decreases with respect to the noninteracting case.