Universal entanglement signatures of interface conformal field theories

Abstract

An interface connecting two distinct conformal field theories hosts rich critical behaviors. In this work, we investigate the entanglement properties of such critical interface theories for probing the underlying universality. As inspired by holographic perspectives, we demonstrate vital features of various entanglement measures regarding such interfaces based on several paradigmatic lattice models. Crucially, for two subsystems adjacent at the interface, the mutual information and the reflected entropy exhibit identical leading logarithmic scaling, giving an effective interface central charge that takes the same value as the smaller central charge of the two conformal field theories. Our work demonstrates that the entanglement measure offers a powerful tool to explore the rich physics in critical interface theories.