Entanglement in a Valence-Bond Solid State

We study entanglement in a valence-bond solid state, which describes the ground state of an Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki quantum spin chain, consisting of bulk spin-1's and two spin-1/2's at the ends. We characterize entanglement between various subsystems of the ground state by mostly calculating the entropy of one of the subsystems; when appropriate, we evaluate concurrences as well. We show that the reduced density matrix of a continuous block of bulk spins is independent of the size of the chain and the location of the block relative to the ends. Moreover, we show that the entanglement of the block with the rest of the sites approaches a constant value exponentially fast, as the size of the block increases. We also calculate the entanglement of (i) any two bulk spins with the rest, and (ii) the end spin-1/2's (together and separately) with the rest of the ground state.