Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Entanglement spectrum of gapless topological phases: A case study with topological superconductors

Archi Banerjee1,2,3 and Meng Zeng1,*

  • *Contact author: mengzeng@pks.mpg.de

Phys. Rev. B 114, 055104 – Published 6 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/svtx-7m6q

Abstract

Using bulk gapless topological superconductors in both 1D and 2D as free fermion model examples, we demonstrate the power of subsystem correlation spectrum (the spectrum of correlation matrix), or equivalently the entanglement spectrum for the case of free fermions, in characterizing the topology of the nontrivial ground state. For the systems considered, we show that signatures of the low-energy spectrum, including both the edge modes and the bulk modes, appear in the correlation spectrum, albeit with different behaviors. This work generalizes the 2D Li-Haldane entanglement spectrum characterization of topological edge states to 2D topological systems with gapless bulk.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (40)

  1. L. Amico, R. Fazio, A. Osterloh, and V. Vedral, Entanglement in many-body systems, Rev. Mod. Phys. 80, 517 (2008).
  2. M. Levin and X.-G. Wen, Detecting topological order in a ground state wave function, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 110405 (2006).
  3. A. Kitaev and J. Preskill, Topological entanglement entropy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 110404 (2006).
  4. H. Li and F. D. M. Haldane, Entanglement spectrum as a generalization of entanglement entropy: Identification of topological order in non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall effect states, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 010504 (2008).
  5. F. Pollmann, A. M. Turner, E. Berg, and M. Oshikawa, Entanglement spectrum of a topological phase in one dimension, Phys. Rev. B 81, 064439 (2010).
  6. A. M. Turner, Y. Zhang, and A. Vishwanath, Entanglement and inversion symmetry in topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 82, 241102(R) (2010).
  7. L. Fidkowski, Entanglement spectrum of topological insulators and superconductors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 130502 (2010).
  8. A. Chandran, M. Hermanns, N. Regnault, and B. A. Bernevig, Bulk-edge correspondence in entanglement spectra, Phys. Rev. B 84, 205136 (2011).
  9. H. Yao and X.-L. Qi, Entanglement entropy and entanglement spectrum of the Kitaev model, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 080501 (2010).
  10. I. Peschel and M.-C. Chung, On the relation between entanglement and subsystem Hamiltonians, Europhys. Lett. 96, 50006 (2011).
  11. X.-L. Qi, H. Katsura, and A. W. W. Ludwig, General relationship between the entanglement spectrum and the edge state spectrum of topological quantum states, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 196402 (2012).
  12. H. Pichler, G. Zhu, A. Seif, P. Zoller, and M. Hafezi, Measurement protocol for the entanglement spectrum of cold atoms, Phys. Rev. X 6, 041033 (2016).
  13. M. Dalmonte, B. Vermersch, and P. Zoller, Quantum simulation and spectroscopy of entanglement Hamiltonians, Nat. Phys. 14, 827 (2018).
  14. M. Dalmonte, V. Eisler, M. Falconi, and B. Vermersch, Entanglement Hamiltonians: From field theory to lattice models and experiments, Ann. Phys. 534, 2200064 (2022).
  15. A. Chandran, V. Khemani, and S. L. Sondhi, How universal is the entanglement spectrum? Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 060501 (2014).
  16. V. Alba, M. Haque, and A. M. Läuchli, Entanglement spectrum of the two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 260403 (2013).
  17. F. Kolley, S. Depenbrock, I. P. McCulloch, U. Schollwöck, and V. Alba, Entanglement spectroscopy of SU(2)-broken phases in two dimensions, Phys. Rev. B 88, 144426 (2013).
  18. D. Poilblanc, Entanglement spectra of quantum Heisenberg ladders, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 077202 (2010).
  19. K. Yang, Field theoretical description of quantum Hall edge reconstruction, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 036802 (2003).
  20. A. Keselman and E. Berg, Gapless symmetry-protected topological phase of fermions in one dimension, Phys. Rev. B 91, 235309 (2015).
  21. R. Verresen, N. G. Jones, and F. Pollmann, Topology and edge modes in quantum critical chains, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 057001 (2018).
  22. T. Scaffidi, D. E. Parker, and R. Vasseur, Gapless symmetry-protected topological order, Phys. Rev. X 7, 041048 (2017).
  23. R. Verresen, R. Thorngren, N. G. Jones, and F. Pollmann, Gapless topological phases and symmetry-enriched quantum criticality, Phys. Rev. X 11, 041059 (2021).
  24. P. Calabrese and A. Lefevre, Entanglement spectrum in one-dimensional systems, Phys. Rev. A 78, 032329 (2008).
  25. F. Pollmann and J. E. Moore, Entanglement spectra of critical and near-critical systems in one dimension, New J. Phys. 12, 025006 (2010).
  26. R. Lundgren, J. Blair, M. Greiter, A. Läuchli, G. A. Fiete, and R. Thomale, Momentum-space entanglement spectrum of bosons and fermions with interactions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 256404 (2014).
  27. R. Thomale, D. P. Arovas, and B. A. Bernevig, Nonlocal order in gapless systems: Entanglement spectrum in spin chains, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 116805 (2010).
  28. R. Lundgren, J. Blair, P. Laurell, N. Regnault, G. A. Fiete, M. Greiter, and R. Thomale, Universal entanglement spectra in critical spin chains, Phys. Rev. B 94, 081112(R) (2016).
  29. X.-J. Yu, S. Yang, H.-Q. Lin, and S.-K. Jian, Universal entanglement spectrum in one-dimensional gapless symmetry protected topological states, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 026601 (2024).
  30. W.-H. Zhong, H.-Q. Lin, and X.-J. Yu, Quantum entanglement of fermionic symmetry-enriched quantum critical points in one dimension, Phys. Rev. B 112, 075129 (2025).
  31. M. Sato and S. Fujimoto, Existence of Majorana fermions and topological order in nodal superconductors with spin-orbit interactions in external magnetic fields, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 217001 (2010).
  32. C. L. M. Wong, J. Liu, K. T. Law, and P. A. Lee, Majorana flat bands and unidirectional Majorana edge states in gapless topological superconductors, Phys. Rev. B 88, 060504(R) (2013).
  33. S.-A. Cheong and C. L. Henley, Many-body density matrices for free fermions, Phys. Rev. B 69, 075111 (2004).
  34. I. Peschel, Calculation of reduced density matrices from correlation functions, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 36, L205 (2003).
  35. I. Peschel and V. Eisler, Reduced density matrices and entanglement entropy in free lattice models, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 42, 504003 (2009).
  36. A. Alexandradinata, T. L. Hughes, and B. A. Bernevig, Trace index and spectral flow in the entanglement spectrum of topological insulators, Phys. Rev. B 84, 195103 (2011).
  37. M.-C. Chung and I. Peschel, Density-matrix spectra of solvable fermionic systems, Phys. Rev. B 64, 064412 (2001).
  38. J. D. Patterson and B. C. Bailey, Solid State Physics: Introduction to the Theory (Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007), pp. 459–507.
  39. Y. Guo, S. Yang, and X.-J. Yu, Generalized Li-Haldane correspondence in critical free-fermion systems, Phys. Rev. Res. 8, 023203 (2026).
  40. L. Fidkowski and A. Kitaev, Effects of interactions on the topological classification of free fermion systems, Phys. Rev. B 81, 134509 (2010).

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation