A fermionic disordered one-dimensional wire in the presence of attractive interactions is known to have two distinct phases, a localized and superconducting, depending on the strength of interaction and disorder. The localized region may also exhibit a metallic behavior if the system size is shorter than the localization length. Here we show that the superconducting phase has a distribution of the entanglement entropy distinct from the metallic regime. The entanglement entropy distribution is strongly asymmetric with a Lévy $\alpha$-stable distribution (compared to the Gaussian metallic distribution), as is seen also for the second Rényi entropy distribution. Thus, entanglement properties may reveal properties which cannot be detected by other methods.

• Received 3 May 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.206401