Measuring Entanglement Entropy in Valence Bond Quantum Monte Carlo Simulations

In this thesis we examine methods for measuring entanglement entropy in spin-1/2 Heisenberg systems using quantum Monte Carlo in the valence bond basis. We begin by presenting the quantum Monte Carlo techniques used in this research. We then use these techniques to directly compare the recently proposed valence bond entanglement entropy to the standard definition of entanglement entropy: the von Neumann entanglement entropy. We find that the valence bond entanglement entropy does not give a bound on the von Neumann entanglement entropy, and that it exhibits a multiplicative logarithmic correction to the area law that is not present in the scaling of the von Neumann entanglement entropy. We then present a method to measure higher orders of the generalized Renyi entanglement entropies using valence bond quantum Monte Carlo, and show results for the second Renyi entropy. We find the results converge to the exact results for one dimensional Heisenberg spin-1/2 chains, and see that the scaling of the second Renyi entropy follows an area law in the two dimensional Heisenberg ground state.