Spatial Entanglement of Fermions in One-Dimensional Quantum Dots

The time-dependent quantum Monte Carlo method for fermions is introduced and applied in the calculation of the entanglement of electrons in one-dimensional quantum dots with several spin-polarized and spin-compensated electron configurations. The rich statistics of wave functions provided by this method allow one to build reduced density matrices for each electron, and to quantify the spatial entanglement using measures such as quantum entropy by treating the electrons as identical or distinguishable particles. Our results indicate that the spatial entanglement in parallel-spin configurations is rather small, and is determined mostly by the spatial quantum nonlocality introduced by the ground state. By contrast, in the spin-compensated case, the outermost opposite-spin electrons interact like bosons, which prevails their entanglement, while the inner-shell electrons remain largely at their Hartree-Fock geometry. Our findings are in close correspondence with the numerically exact results, wherever such comparison is possible.