Extensive entanglement between coupled Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids in and out of equilibrium

Abstract

Quantum entanglement exists in nature but is absent in classical physics, hence it fundamentally distinguishes quantum from classical theories. While entanglement is routinely observed for few-body systems, it is significantly more challenging to witness in quantum many-body systems. Here, we theoretically study entanglement between two parallel and spatially separated Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids (TLLs) partitioned along the longitudinal axis. In particular, we focus on 1D Bose gases as a realization of TLLs and investigate two experimentally relevant situations: tunnel-coupled gases at finite temperatures and after coherent splitting. In both scenarios, we analytically calculate the logarithmic negativity and identify a threshold temperature below which the system is entangled. Notably, this threshold temperature is accessible in the current and near-term 1D Bose gas experiments. Furthermore, we investigate the crossover between quantum and classical correlations in the vicinity of the threshold temperature by comparing logarithmic negativity with mutual information. We argue that the initial mutual information established by the coherent splitting is conserved in TLL dynamics, thus preventing certain generalized Gibbs ensembles from being reached during prethermalization. Moreover, both logarithmic negativity and mutual information are found to scale extensively with the subsystem's length. Although the ground-state entanglement between coupled TLLs has been predicted to be extensive, this setting is largely overlooked compared to other partitions. Our work extends the study of entanglement between coupled TLLs to finite temperatures and out-of-equilibrium regimes, and provides a strategy towards experimental detection of extensive entanglement in quantum many-body systems at finite temperatures.