The Bisognano-Wichmann Property for Non-unitary Wightman Conformal Field Theories

Abstract The Bisognano-Wichmann and Haag duality properties for algebraic quantum field theories are often studied using the powerful tools of Tomita-Takesaki modular theory for nets of operator algebras. In this article, we study analogous properties of nets of algebras generated by smeared Wightman fields, for potentially non-unitary theories. In light of recent work constructing Wightman field theories for (non-unitary) Möbius vertex algebras, we obtain a broadly applicable non-unitary version of the Bisognano-Wichmann property. In this setting we do not have access to the traditional tools of Hilbert space functional analysis, like functional calculus. Instead, results analogous to those of Tomita-Takesaki theory are derived ‘by hand’ from the Wightman axioms. As an application, we demonstrate Haag duality for nets of smeared Wightman fields.