Topological entanglement negativity in Chern-Simons theories

Abstract: We study the topological entanglement negativity between two spatial regions in (2+1)-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge theories by using the replica trick and the surgery method. For a bipartitioned or tripartitioned spatial manifold, we show how the topological entanglement negativity depends on the presence of quasiparticles and the choice of ground states. In particular, for two adjacent non-contractible regions on a tripartitioned torus, the entanglement negativity provides a simple way to distinguish Abelian and non-Abelian theories. Our method applies to a Chern-Simons gauge theory defined on an arbitrary oriented (2+1)-dimensional spacetime manifold. Our results agree with the edge theory approach in a recent work (X. Wen, S. Matsuura and S. Ryu, arXiv:1603.08534).