Entanglement signatures of phase transition in higher-derivative quantum field theories

We show that the variations of the ground state entanglement in linear, higher spatial derivative field theories at zero temperature have signatures of phase transition. Around the critical point, when the dispersion relation changes from linear to nonlinear, there is a fundamental change in the reduced density matrix leading to a change in the scaling of entanglement entropy. We suggest possible explanations involving both kinematical and dynamical effects. We discuss the implication of our work for 2D condensed matter systems, black-hole entropy, and models of quantum gravity.