Operator content of real-space entanglement spectra at conformal critical points

Abstract: We provide numerical evidence that the low-lying part of the entanglement spectrum of a real-space block (i.e. a single interval) of a one-dimensional quantum many body system at a conformal critical point corresponds to the energy spectrum of a boundary conformal field theory (CFT). This correspondence allows to uncover a subset of the operator content of a conformal field theory by inspection of the entanglement spectrum of a single wave function, thus providing important information on a CFT beyond its central charge. As a practical application we show that for many systems described by a compactified boson CFT, one can infer the compactification radius (governing e.g. the power law decay of correlation functions) of the theory in a simple way based on the entanglement spectrum.