Conformal anomaly and surface energy for Potts and Ashkin-Teller quantum chains

Abstract

Exact equivalences between the critical quantum Potts and Ashkin-Teller chains and a modified XXZ Heisenberg chain have recently been derived by Alcaraz et al (1987). The leading finite-size corrections to the ground-state energies of these chains are derived using the methods of de Vega and Woynarovich (1985) and Eckle. Exact results are then obtained for the conformal anomaly of each model, and for the surface energy in the case of free boundaries.