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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Entanglement asymmetry in gauge theories: Chiral anomaly in the finite temperature massless Schwinger model

Adrien Florio1,* and Sara Murciano2,†

  • *Contact author: aflorio@physik.uni-bielefeld.de
  • †Contact author: sara.murciano@universite-paris-saclay.fr
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Phys. Rev. D 113, L091901 – Published 5 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/q386-v4ch

Abstract

Entanglement asymmetry has emerged in recent years as a practical quantity to study phases of matter. We present the first study of entanglement asymmetry in gauge theories by considering the chiral anomaly of the analytically solvable massless Schwinger model at both zero and finite temperatures. At zero temperature, we find the asymmetry exhibits logarithmic growth with system size. At finite temperature, we show that it is parametrically more sensitive to chiral symmetry breaking than the corresponding local order parameter: While the chiral condensate decays exponentially, the asymmetry decreases only logarithmically. This establishes the entanglement asymmetry as a promising tool to probe (finite-temperature) phase transitions in gauge theories.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, L091901– Published 5 May, 2026
  • Received 30 November 2025
  • Accepted 27 March 2026
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