This thesis reviews the paper "Conformal Field Theory Ground States as Critical Points of an Entropy Function". The work sits at the intersection of conformal field theory and quantum information, exploring a conjectured entropy formula whose critical points are precisely the ground states of 1+1D conformal field theories.
We review the necessary background material in Conformal Field Theory and Quantum Information, covering primary fields in CFT, the Entanglement Hamiltonian of a ground state 1+1D CFT, and Entanglement entropy. We then discuss the main results of the paper — the conjectured entropy formula satisfied by the ground states of 1+1D conformal field theories — and show that the Entanglement Hamiltonian conjectured in the paper is unique up to a linear combination. We conclude by discussing some of the questions the paper raises and directions for further study.
Topics covered: primary fields and the OPE, the modular Hamiltonian, Rényi and von Neumann entropy, the Reeh-Schlieder theorem, and uniqueness of the Entanglement Hamiltonian.