Experimental verification of the area law of mutual information in quantum field theory

Theoretical understanding of the scaling of entropies and the mutual information in quantum many-body systems has led to significant advances in the research of correlated states of matter, quantum field theory, and gravity.

Although there have been several experimental measurements of Renyi and von Neumann entropies in systems with discrete degrees of freedom, the measurement of entropies between extensive intervals of continuous systems has remained elusive.

In this work, we measure the von Neumann entropy of spatially extended subsystems in an ultra-cold atom simulator of one-dimensional quantum field theories. We experimentally verify one of the fundamental properties of equilibrium states of gapped quantum many-body systems, the area law of quantum mutual information. We also study the dependence of mutual information on temperature and the separation between the subsystems.

Our work demonstrates the capability of ultra-cold atom simulators to measure entanglement in quantum field theories.