English

Modular Hamiltonian and modular flow of massless fermions on a cylinder

Mathematical Physics 2024-06-28 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory math.MP

Abstract

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 mixed zero-temperature state) the modular data is known, our results for the generic ground state in the periodic case are completely new. We find that generically both the modular flow and the modular Hamiltonian are non-local, and we show that in the parametric limit where the state becomes pure the modular data becomes local. Moreover, even in the local case the modular flow generically mixes the two chiralities. This kind of behavior has not been observed previously.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.19360,
  title  = {Modular Hamiltonian and modular flow of massless fermions on a cylinder},
  author = {Daniela Cadamuro and Markus B. Fröb and Guillem Pérez-Nadal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.19360},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

35 pages, 2 figures. Preliminary version, comments are welcome!