Modular Hamiltonian in the semi infinite line, Part II: dimensional reduction of Dirac fermions in spherically symmetric regions

We revisit the calculation of multi-interval modular Hamiltonians for free fermions using a Euclidean path integral approach. We show how the multi-interval modular flow is obtained by gluing together the single interval modular flows. Using this relation, we obtain an exact expression for the multi-interval modular Hamiltonian and entanglement entropy in agreement with existing results. An essential ingredient in our derivation is the introduction of the \emp{modular action}...

In this paper we present the detailed calculation of a new modular Hamiltonian, namely that of a chiral fermion on a circle at non-zero temperature. We provide explicit results for an arbitrary collection of intervals, which we discuss at length by checking against known results in different limits and by computing the associated modular flow. We also compute the entanglement entropy, and we obtain a simple expression for it which appears to be more manageable than those alre...

In two-dimensional conformal field theories (CFT) in Minkowski spacetime, we study the spacetime distance between two events along two distinct modular trajectories. When the spatial line is bipartite by a single interval, we consider both the ground state and the state at finite different temperatures for the left and right moving excitations. For the free massless Dirac field in the ground state, the bipartition of the line given by the union of two disjoint intervals is al...

Modular flow is a symmetry of the algebra of observables associated to spacetime regions. Being closely related to entanglement, it has played a key role in recent connections between information theory, QFT and gravity. However, little is known about its action beyond highly symmetric cases. The key idea of this work is to introduce a new formula for modular flows for free chiral fermions in $1+1$ dimensions, working directly from the \textit{resolvent}, a standard technique...

In this Letter we study the effect of topological zero modes on entanglement Hamiltonians and entropy of free chiral fermion systems in (1+1)d. We show how Riemann-Hilbert solutions combined with finite rank perturbation theory allow us to obtain explicit expressions for entanglement Hamiltonians. We consider both chiral Majorana and Dirac fermions, and explore the effects of boundary conditions (periodic/anti-periodic for Majorana and generic for Dirac) and associated zero m...

The entanglement spectrum of a bipartite quantum system is given by the distribution of eigenvalues of the modular Hamiltonian. In this work, we compute the entanglement spectrum in the vacuum state for a subregion of a $d$-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) admitting a holographic dual. In the case of a spherical (or planar) entangling surface, we recover known results in two dimensions, including the Cardy formula in the high energy regime. In higher dimensions $d>2$,...

We consider the fermionic entanglement entropy for the free Dirac field in a bounded spatial region of Minkowski spacetime. In order to make the system ultraviolet finite, a regularization is introduced. An area law is proven in the limiting cases where the volume tends to infinity and/or the regularization length tends to zero. The technical core of the paper is to generalize a theorem of Harold Widom to pseudo-differential operators whose principal symbols develop a specifi...

We determine explicitly the modular flow and the modular Hamiltonian for massless free fermions in diamonds on a cylinder in 1+1 dimensions. We consider both periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions, the ground state in the antiperiodic case and the most general family of quasi-free zero-energy ground states in the periodic case, which depend on four parameters and are generally mixed. While for the antiperiodic ground state and one periodic ground state (the maximally m...

We study the entanglement Hamiltonian for a spherical domain in the ground state of a nonrelativistic free-fermion gas in arbitrary dimensions. Decomposed into a set of radial entanglement Hamiltonians, we show that the entanglement spectrum in each sector is identical to that of a hopping chain in a linear potential, with the angular momentum playing the role of the subsystem boundary. Furthermore, the eigenfunctions follow from a commuting differential operator that has exa...

In this article we study two-dimensional Dirac Hamiltonians with non-commutativity both in coordinates and momenta from an algebraic perspective. In order to do so, we consider the graded Lie algebra $\mathfrak{sl}(2|1)$ generated by Hermitian bilinear forms in the non-commutative dynamical variables and the Dirac matrices in $2+1$ dimensions. By further defining a total angular momentum operator, we are able to express a class of Dirac Hamiltonians completely in terms of the...