Ghost-spin chains, entanglement, and bc-ghost CFTs

We study one-dimensional chains of ghost-spins with nearest neighbor interactions amongst them, developing further the study of ghost-spins in previous work, defined as 2-state spin variables with indefinite norm. First we study finite ghost-spin chains with Ising-like nearest neighbor interactions: this helps organize and clarify the study of entanglement earlier, and we develop this further. Then we study a family of infinite ghost-spin chains with a different Hamiltonian containing nearest neighbor hopping-type interactions. By defining fermionic ghost-spin variables through a Jordan-Wigner transformation, we argue that these ghost-spin chains lead in the continuum limit to the bc-ghost conformal field theories.