Reduced density matrix and entanglement Hamiltonian for a free real scalar field on an interval

Abstract

An exact result for the reduced density matrix on a finite interval for a $1+1$ dimensional free real scalar field in the ground state is presented. In the massless case, the Williamson decomposition of the appearing kernels is explicitly performed, which allows to reproduce the known result for the entanglement (modular) Hamiltonian and, for a small mass $M$ of the field, find the leading $\sim1/\ln M$ non-local corrections. In the opposite $M\to\infty$ case, it is argued that, up to terms $O(M^{-1/2})$, the entanglement Hamiltonian is local with the density being the Hamiltonian density spatially modulated by a triangular-shape function.