Impurity Entanglement Entropy and the Kondo Screening Cloud
Abstract
The screening of an impurity spin by conduction electrons is associated with
the formation of a large Kondo screening cloud, of size xi_K. We study the
quantum entanglement between a region of size r surrounding the impurity and
the rest of the sample, (of total size R) using Density Matrix Renormalization
Group and analytic methods. The corresponding "impurity entanglement entropy",
S_{imp}, is shown to be a universal scaling function of r/xi_K and r/R. We
calculate this universal function using Fermi liquid theory in the regime xi_K
<< r.