Entangled spins and ghost-spins

Abstract

We study patterns of quantum entanglement in systems of spins and ghost-spins regarding them as simple quantum mechanical toy models for theories containing negative norm states. We define a single ghost-spin as in arXiv:1602.06505 [hep-th] as a 2-state spin variable with an indefinite inner product in the state space. We find that whenever the spin sector is disentangled from the ghost-spin sector (both of which could be entangled within themselves), the reduced density matrix obtained by tracing over all the ghost-spins gives rise to positive entanglement entropy for positive norm states, while negative norm states have an entanglement entropy with a negative real part and a constant imaginary part. However when the spins are entangled with the ghost-spins, there are new entanglement patterns in general. For systems where the number of ghost-spins is even, it is possible to find subsectors of the Hilbert space where positive norm states always lead to positive entanglement entropy after tracing over the ghost-spins. With an odd number of ghost-spins however, we find that there always exist positive norm states with negative real part for entanglement entropy after tracing over the ghost-spins.

Latex, 31pgs, v2: new section added on defining the form of the reduced density matrix used, v3: minor clarifications added, matches published version