Entanglement structure of the dynamical phases in the sub-Ohmic spin-boson model

The sub-Ohmic spin-boson model exhibits three distinct dynamical regimes in its spin population dynamics, classified as coherent, incoherent, and pseudo-coherent. Whether these regimes correspond to distinct spin-bath entanglement structures remains an open question. Here we address this using tree tensor network states with projector-splitting time evolution (TTN-TDVP-PS), scanning a broad grid in the sub-Ohmic $(s, α)$ plane. We find that the spin entanglement entropy $S_\mathrm{spin}(t)$ reaches a stationary plateau on a timescale shorter than the polarization relaxation, enabling construction of a stationary entropy landscape from the stationary value $S_\mathrm{stable}$. Within this scalar entropy landscape, the entropy ridge broadly follows the population-based phase boundary at small $s$, but does not reproduce the two-branch structure at large $s$. The ridge remains single-valued within the incoherent region rather than separately tracking both population-based transitions. The Bloch-sphere representation provides a geometric interpretation of this behavior. The entropy plateau corresponds to trajectories settling onto constant-radius shells, with the ridge marking the parameters of smallest stationary Bloch radius. Mode-resolved bath entanglement shows that low-frequency modes dominate the environmental entropy scale and that coherent dynamics enhance bath-mode correlations beyond direct spin--mode correlations. These results establish the stationary spin entanglement entropy as a physically informative observable that complements population-based classifications of dissipative quantum dynamics.

Source: arXiv:2606.20313v1 - http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20313v1 PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.20313v1 Original Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20313v1