简介: |
In a physical system with conformal symmetry, observables depend on
??cross-ratios, measures of distance invariant under global conformal
??transformations (conformal geometry for short). We identify a
quantum ??information-theoretic mechanism by which the conformal
geometry ??emerges at the gapless edge of a 2+1D quantum many-body
system with a ??bulk energy gap. We introduce a novel pair of
information-theoretic ??quantities (?,η) that can be defined locally
on the edge from the ??wavefunction of the many-body system, without
prior knowledge of any ??distance measure. We posit that, for a
topological ground state, the ??quantity ? is stationary under
arbitrary variations of the quantum ??state, and study the logical
consequences. We show that stationarity, ??modulo an
entanglement-based assumption about the bulk, implies (i) ? ??is a
non-negative constant that can be interpreted as the total ??central
charge of the edge theory. (ii) η is a cross-ratio, obeying ??the
full set of mathematical consistency rules, which further ??indicates
the existence of a distance measure of the edge with global
??conformal invariance. Thus, the conformal geometry emerges from a
??simple assumption on ground state entanglement. The stationarity of
? ??is equivalent to a vector fixed-point equation involving η,
making ?our ??assumption locally checkable. If time permits, we
discuss a ?class of ??modular flow on a disk, which creates only edge
?excitations. We ??intuitively explain why Virasoro algebra can be
?revealed from a single ??wavefunction by analyzing such modular flows. |