We study general entanglement properties of the excited states of the one dimensional translational invariant free fermions and coupled harmonic oscillators. In particular, using the integrals of motion, we prove that these Hamiltonians independent of the gap (mass) has infinite excited states that can be described by conformal field theories with integer or half-integer central charges. In the case of free fermions, we also show that because of the huge degeneracy in the spectrum, even a gapless Hamiltonian can have excited states with an area-law. Finally, we study the universal average entanglement entropy over eigenstates of the Hamiltonian of the free fermions introduced recently in [L. Vidmar, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 020601 (2017)]. In particular, using a duality relation, we propose a method which can be useful for experimental measurement of the universal average entanglement entropy. Part of our conclusions can be extended to the quantum spin chains that are associated with the free fermions via Jordan-Wigner(JW) transformation.

Consider a generic quantum spin chain that can be mapped to free quadratic fermions via Jordan-Wigner (JW) transformation. In the presence of arbitrary boundary magnetic fields, this Hamiltonian is no longer a quadratic Hamiltonian after JW transformation. Using ancillary sites and enlarging the Hamiltonian we first introduce a bigger quadratic Hamiltonian. Then we diagonalize this enlarged Hamiltonian in its most generic form and show that all the states are degenerate because of the presence of a zero mode. The eigenstates of the original spin chain with boundary magnetic fields can be derived after appropriate projection. We study in depth the properties of the eigenstates of the enlarged Hamiltonian. In particular we find: 1) the eigenstates in configuration bases, 2) calculate all the correlation functions, 3) find the reduced density matrices, 4) calculate the entanglement entropy. We show that the generic eigenstate of the enlarged Hamiltonian (including the eigenstates of the original spin chain) breaks the parity number symmetry and consequently one needs to take care of some technicalities regarding the calculation of the reduced density matrix and entanglement entropy. Interestingly we show that the entanglement structure of these eigenstates is quite universal and independent of the Hamiltonian. We support our results by applying them to a couple of examples.