Quantum entanglement of helium-like systems with varying-Z: Compact state-of-the-art CI wave functions

Abstract

In this work we have performed state-of-the-art configuration-interaction (CI) calculations to determine the linear and von Neumann entanglement entropies for the helium-like systems with varying nuclear charge Z in the range . The focus of the work resides on determining accurate entanglement values for 2-electron systems with the lowest computational cost through compact CI-wave functions. Our entanglement results for the helium atom fully agree with the results obtained with higher quality wave functions of the Kinoshita type (Dehesa [5]). We find that the correlation energy is linearly related to the entanglement measures associated with the linear and von Neumann entropies of the single-particle reduced density matrizes, which sheds new light on the physical implications of entanglement in helium-like systems. Moreover, we report CI-wave-function-based benchmark results for the entanglement values for all members of the helium isoelectronic series with an accuracy similar to that of Kinoshita-type wave functions. Finally, we give parametric expressions of the linear and von Neumann entanglement measures for two-electron systems as Z varies from 1 to 10.