Modular Hamiltonian of Excited States in Conformal Field Theory

Abstract

We present a novel replica trick that computes the relative entropy of two arbitrary states in conformal field theory. Our replica trick is based on the analytic continuation of partition functions that break the replica Z_n symmetry. It provides a method for computing arbitrary matrix elements of the modular Hamiltonian corresponding to excited states in terms of correlation functions. We show that the quantum Fisher information in vacuum can be expressed in terms of two-point functions on the replica geometry. We perform sample calculations in two-dimensional conformal field theories.