We investigate the entanglement properties of the valence-bond-solid states with generic integer spin S. Using the Schwinger boson representation of the valence-bond-solid states, the entanglement entropy, the von Neumann entropy of a subsystem, is obtained exactly and its relationship with the usual correlation function is clarified. The saturation value of the entanglement entropy, 2 log 2 ͑S +1͒, is derived explicitly and is interpreted in terms of the edge-state picture. The validity of our analytical results and the edge-state picture is numerically confirmed. We also propose an application of the edge state as a qubit for quantum computation.

We characterize several phases of gapped spin systems by local order parameters defined by quantized Berry phases 1 . This characterization is topologically stable against any small perturbation as long as the energy gap remains finite. The models we pick up are S = 1, 2 dimerized Heisenberg chains and S = 2 Heisenberg chains with uniaxial single-ion-type anisotropy. Analytically we also evaluate the topological local order parameters for the generalized Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) model. The relation between the present Berry phases and the fractionalization in the integer spin chains are discussed as well.

We study a 1-dimensional AKLT spin chain, consisting of spins S in the bulk and S/2 at both ends. The unique ground state of this AKLT model is described by the Valence-Bond-Solid (VBS) state. We investigate the density matrix of a contiguous block of bulk spins in this ground state. It is shown that the density matrix is a projector onto a subspace of dimension (S + 1)2 . This subspace is described by nonzero eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of the density matrix. We prove that for large block the von Neumann entropy coincides with Renyi entropy and is equal to ln (S + 1) 2 .

We investigate entanglement properties in the ground state of the open/periodic SU(n) generalized valence-bond-solid state consisting of representations of SU(n). We obtain exact expression for the reduced density matrix of a block of contiguous spins and explicitly evaluate the von Neumann and the Rényi entropies. We discover that the Rényi entropy is independent of the parameter α in the limit of large block sizes and its value 2 log n coincides with that of von Neumann entropy. We also find the direct relation between the reduced density matrix of the subsystem and edge states for the corresponding open boundary system.

We investigate the entanglement entropy (EE) of gapped S=1 and $S=1/2$ spin chains with dimerization. We find that the effective boundary degrees of freedom as edge states contribute significantly to the EE. For the $S=1/2$ dimerized Heisenberg chain, the EE of the sufficiently long chain is essentially explained by the localized $S=1/2$ effective spins on the boundaries. As for S=1, the effective spins are also $S=1/2$ causing a Kennedy triplet that yields a lower bound for the EE. In this case, the residual entanglement reduces substantially by a continuous deformation of the Heisenberg model to that of the AKLT Hamiltonian.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure