The quantum entanglement for the two electrons in three-body atomic systems such as the helium atom, the hydrogen negative ion and the positronium negative ion are investigated by employing highly correlated Hylleraas functions to represent the ground states of such systems. As a measure of the spatial entanglement, the linear entropy of the reduced density matrix is calculated for the ground states. The required four-electron (12-dimensional) integrals are solved analytically such that they are suitable for machine computations. Results are compared with other calculations when available.

In this work, we present an investigation on the spatial entanglement entropies in the helium atom by using highly correlated Hylleraas functions to represent the S-wave states. Singletspin 1sns1 S e states (with n = 1 to 6) and triplet-spin 1sns 3 S e states (with n = 2 to 6) are investigated. As a measure on the spatial entanglement, von Neumann entropy and linear entropy are calculated. Furthermore, we apply the Schmidt-Slater decomposition method on the two-electron wave functions, and obtain eigenvalues of the one-particle reduced density matrix, from which the linear entropy and von Neumann entropy can be determined.

Entropic measures provide analytic tools to help us understand correlation in quantum systems. In our previous work, we calculated linear entropy and von Neumann entropy as entanglement measures for the ground state and lower lying excited states in helium-like systems. In this work, we adopt another entropic measure, Shannon entropy, to probe the nature of correlation effects. Besides the results of the Shannon entropy in coordinate space for the singlet ground states of helium-like systems including positronium negative ion, hydrogen negative ion, helium atom, and lithium positive ion, we also show results for systems with nucleus charge around the ionization threshold.