Entanglement Entropies in Conformal Systems with Boundaries

Understand

We study the entanglement entropies in one-dimensional open critical systems, whose effective description is given by a conformal field theory with boundaries.

• We show that for pure-state systems formed by the ground state or by the excited states associated to primary fields, the entanglement entropies have a finite-size behavior that depends on the correlation of the underlying field theory.
• The analytical results are checked numerically, finding excellent agreement for the quantum chains ruled by the theories with central charge $c=1/2$ and $c=1$.