Entanglement entropy and spectra of the one-dimensional Kugel-Khomskii model

We study the quantum entanglement of the spin and orbital degrees of freedom in the one-dimensional Kugel-Khomskii model, which includes both gapless and gapped phases, using analytical techniques and exact diagonalization with up to 16 sites. We compute the entanglement entropy and the entanglement spectra using a variety of partitions or cuts of the Hilbert space, including two distinct real-space cuts and a momentum-space cut. Our results show that the Kugel-Khomski model possesses a number of new features not previously encountered in studies of the entanglement spectra. Notably, we find robust gaps in the entanglement spectra for both gapped and gapless phases with the orbital partition, and show these are not connected to each other. The counting of the low-lying entanglement eigenvalues shows that the virtual edge picture, which equates the low-energy Hamiltonian of a virtual edge, here one gapless leg of a two-leg ladder, to the low-energy entanglement Hamiltonian, breaks down for this model, even though the equivalence has been shown to hold for a similar cut in a large class of closely related models. In addition, we show that a momentum space cut in the gapless phase leads to qualitative differences in the entanglement spectrum when compared with the same cut in the gapless spin-1/2 Heisenberg spin chain. We emphasize the new information content in the entanglement spectra compared to the entanglement entropy, and using quantum entanglement, we present a refined phase diagram of the model. Using analytical arguments, exploiting various symmetries of the model, and applying arguments of adiabatic continuity from two exactly solvable points of the model, we are also able to prove several results regarding the structure of the low-lying entanglement eigenvalues. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.86.224422