Bosonic Gaussian states from conformal field theory

Benedikt Herwerth, Germán Sierra, J. Ignacio Cirac, Anne E. B. Nielsen

Published 2018-07-05Version 1

We study nonchiral wave functions for systems with continuous spins obtained from the conformal field theory (CFT) of a free, massless boson. In contrast to the case of discrete spins, these can be treated as bosonic Gaussian states, which allows us to efficiently compute correlations and entanglement properties both in one (1D) and in two spatial dimensions (2D). In 1D, the computed entanglement entropy and spectra are in agreement with the underlying CFT. Furthermore, we construct a 1D parent Hamiltonian with a low-energy spectrum corresponding to that of a free, massless boson. In 2D, we find edge excitations in the entanglement spectrum, although the states do not have intrinsic topological order, as revealed by a determination of the topological entanglement entropy.