Momentum-space entanglement in Heisenberg spin-half ladders

We study momentum-space entanglement in quantum spin-half ladders consisting of two coupled critical $XXZ$ spin-half chains, using field theoretical methods developed by Lundgren et al. [Phys. Rev. B 88, 245137 (2013)] and exact diagonalization. When the system is gapped, we analytically find that the momentum-space entanglement Hamiltonian is described by a chiral conformal field theory with a central charge of 2. This is in contrast to entanglement Hamiltonians of various real-space partitions of gapped-spin ladders that have a central charge of 1. When the system is gapless, the entanglement Hamiltonian consists of one gapless mode that is linear in subsystem momentum and one mode with a flat dispersion relation. In the gapless region, we extend the work of Lundgren et al. to include the effect of a certain irrelevant term on the entanglement spectrum. In both the gapless and gapped phases, the momentum-space entanglement entropy obeys a volume law. In the gapless region, we find a subleading constant term in the entanglement entropy which contains information about the underlying field theory of the system. The analytical predictions for the entanglement spectrum are consistent with results from exact diagonalization.