Universal Driven Critical Dynamics of Entanglement Entropy
Abstract
The Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) and finite-time scaling (FTS) provide a foundational framework for driven critical dynamics, yet their predictive power has been largely confined to local observables. Here, we establish a universal finite-time scaling theory for the nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum entanglement. Using unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the corner entanglement entropy of (2+1)-dimensional interacting Dirac fermions driven from ordered phases toward a quantum critical point. We find that the corner entanglement accurately obeys a universal driven scaling governed by the driving rate and system size, persisting whether the initial ordered state is fully gapped or hosts gapless Goldstone modes. Crucially, this dynamical entanglement exhibits a logarithmic dependence on the driving rate, from which the universal corner coefficient of the underlying conformal field theory can be robustly extracted far from equilibrium. These results generalize the KZM from local observables to the intrinsic nonlocal quantum information measures, offering a practical blueprint for characterizing quantum criticality and entanglement on programmable quantum simulators.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{shen2026universal,
title = {{Universal Driven Critical Dynamics of Entanglement Entropy}},
author = {Chang-Yu Shen and Shuai Yin and Zi-Xiang Li},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.03854},
eprint = {2609.03854},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03854},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Universal Driven Critical Dynamics of Entanglement Entropy
AU - Chang-Yu Shen
AU - Shuai Yin
AU - Zi-Xiang Li
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.03854
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03854
AB - The Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) and finite-time scaling (FTS) provide a foundational framework for driven critical dynamics, yet their predictive power has been largely confined to local observables. Here, we establish a universal finite-time scaling theory for the nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum entanglement. Using unbiased quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the corner entanglement entropy of (2+1)-dimensional interacting Dirac fermions driven from ordered phases toward a quantum critical point. We find that the corner entanglement accurately obeys a universal driven scaling governed by the driving rate and system size, persisting whether the initial ordered state is fully gapped or hosts gapless Goldstone modes. Crucially, this dynamical entanglement exhibits a logarithmic dependence on the driving rate, from which the universal corner coefficient of the underlying conformal field theory can be robustly extracted far from equilibrium. These results generalize the KZM from local observables to the intrinsic nonlocal quantum information measures, offering a practical blueprint for characterizing quantum criticality and entanglement on programmable quantum simulators.
ER -