Convex-roof entanglement measures of density matrices block diagonal in disjoint subspaces for the study of thermal states

Abstract

We provide a proof that entanglement of any density matrix which block diagonal in subspaces which are disjoint in terms of the Hilbert space of one of the two potentially entangled subsystems can simply be calculated as the weighted average of entanglement present within each block. This is especially useful for thermal-equilibrium states which always inherit the symmetries present in the Hamiltonian, since block-diagonal Hamiltonians are common as are interactions which involve only a single degree of freedom of a greater system. We exemplify our method on a simple Hamiltonian, showing the diversity in possible temperature-dependencies of Gibbs state entanglement which can emerge in different parameter ranges.