Entanglement Entropy of Eigenstates of Quantum Chaotic Hamiltonians

Abstract: In quantum statistical mechanics, it is of fundamental interest to understand how close the bipartite entanglement entropy of eigenstates of quantum chaotic Hamiltonians is to maximal. For random pure states in the Hilbert space, the average entanglement entropy is known to be nearly maximal, with a deviation that is, at most, a constant. Here we prove that, in a system that is away from half filling and divided in two equal halves, an upper bound for the average entanglement entropy of random pure states with a fixed particle number and normally distributed real coefficients exhibits a deviation from the maximal value that grows with the square root of the volume of the system. Exact numerical results for highly excited eigenstates of a particle number conserving quantum chaotic model indicate that the bound is saturated with increasing system size.