Tensor network renormalization group maps study critical points of 2d lattice models like the Ising model by finding the fixed point of the RG map. In a prior work arXiv:2408.10312 we showed that by adding a rotation to the RG map, the Newton method could be implemented to find an extremely accurate fixed point. For a particular RG map (Gilt-TNR) we studied the spectrum of the Jacobian of the RG map at the fixed point and found good agreement between the eigenvalues corresponding to relevant and marginal operators and their known exact values. In this companion work we use two further methods to extract many more scaling dimensions from this Newton method fixed point, and compare the numerical results with the predictions of conformal field theory (CFT). The first method is the well-known transfer matrix. We introduce some extensions of this method that provide spins of the CFT operators modulo an integer. We find good agreement for the scaling dimensions and spins up to $\Delta=3\frac1 8$. The second method we refer to as the lattice dilatation operator (LDO). This lesser-known method obtains good agreement with CFT up to $\Delta=6$. Moreover, the inclusion of a rotation in the RG map makes it possible to extract spins of the CFT operators modulo 4 from this method. Some of the eigenvalues of the Jacobian of the RG map can come from perturbations associated with total derivative interactions and so are not universal. In some past studies (arXiv:2102.08136, arXiv:2305.09899) such non-universal eigenvalues did not appear in the Jacobian. We explain this surprising result by showing that their RG map has the unusual property that the Jacobian is equivalent to the LDO operator.
In the tensor network approach to statistical physics, properties of the critical point of a 2D lattice model are encoded by a four-legged tensor which is a fixed point of an RG map. The traditional way to find the fixed point tensor consists in iterating the RG map after having tuned the temperature to criticality. Here we develop a different and more direct technique, which solves the fixed point equation via the Newton method. This is challenging due to the existence of marginal deformations -- linear transformations of the coordinate frame, which parametrize a two-dimensional family of fixed points. We address this challenge by including a 90 degree rotation into the RG map. This flips the sign of the problematic marginal eigenvalues, rendering the fixed point isolated and accessible via the Newton method. We demonstrate the power of this technique via explicit computations for the 2D Ising model. Using the Gilt-TNR algorithm at bond dimension $\chi=30$, we find the fixed point tensor with $10^{-9}$ accuracy, much higher than what was previously achieved.
We study multiscalar theories with $\text{O}(N) \times \text{O}(2)$ symmetry. These models have a stable fixed point in $d$ dimensions if $N$ is greater than some critical value $N_c(d)$. Previous estimates of this critical value from perturbative and non-perturbative renormalization group methods have produced mutually incompatible results. We use numerical conformal bootstrap methods to constrain $N_c(d)$ for $3 \leq d < 4$. Our results show that $N_c> 3.78$ for $d = 3$. This favors the scenario that the physically relevant models with $N = 2,3$ in $d=3$ do not have a stable fixed point, indicating a first-order transition. Our result exemplifies how conformal windows can be rigorously constrained with modern numerical bootstrap algorithms.
The numerical conformal bootstrap has become in the last 15 years an indispensable tool for studying strongly coupled CFTs in various dimensions. Here we review the main developments in the field in the last 5 years, since the appearance of the previous comprehensive review \citePoland:2018epd. We describe developments in the software (\tt SDPB 2.0, \tt scalar\_blocks, \tt blocks\_3d, \tt autoboot, \tt hyperion, \tt simpleboot), and on the algorithmic side (Delauney triangulation, cutting surface, tiptop, navigator function, skydive). We also describe the main physics applications which were obtained using the new technology.
We revisit critical phenomena in isotropic ferromagnets with strong dipolar interactions. The corresponding RG fixed point - dipolar fixed point - was first studied in 1973 by Aharony and Fisher. It is distinct from the Heisenberg fixed point, although the critical exponents are close. On the theoretical side, we discuss scale invariance without conformal invariance realized by this fixed point. We elucidate the non-renormalization of the virial current due to a shift symmetry, and show that the same mechanism is at work in all other known local fixed points which are scale but not conformal invariant. On the phenomenological side, we discuss the relative strength of dipolar and short-range interactions. In some materials, like the europium compounds, dipolar interactions are strong, and the critical behavior is dipolar. In others, like Fe or Ni, dipolar interactions are weaker, and the Heisenberg critical behavior in a range of temperatures is followed by the dipolar behavior closer to the critical point. Some of these effects have been seen experimentally.
We consider the transverse field Ising model in $(2+1)$D, putting 12 spins at the vertices of the regular icosahedron. The model is tiny by the exact diagonalization standards, and breaks rotation invariance. Yet we show that it allows a meaningful comparison to the 3D Ising CFT on $\mathbb{R}\times S^2$, by including effective perturbations of the CFT Hamiltonian with a handful of local operators. This extreme example shows the power of conformal perturbation theory in understanding finite $N$ effects in models on regularized $S^2$. Its ideal arena of application should be the recently proposed models of fuzzy sphere regularization.
Numerical evidence suggests that the Random Field Ising Model loses Parisi-Sourlas SUSY and the dimensional reduction property somewhere between 4 and 5 dimensions, while a related model of branched polymers retains these features in any $d$. These notes give a leisurely introduction to a recent theory, developed jointly with A. Kaviraj and E. Trevisani, which aims to explain these facts. Based on the lectures given in Cortona and at the IHES in 2022.
We continue our study of rigorous renormalization group (RG) maps for tensor networks that was begun in arXiv:2107.11464. In this paper we construct a rigorous RG map for 2D tensor networks whose domain includes tensors that represent the 2D Ising model at low temperatures with a magnetic field $h$. We prove that the RG map has two stable fixed points, corresponding to the two ground states, and one unstable fixed point which is an example of a discontinuity fixed point. For the Ising model at low temperatures the RG map flows to one of the stable fixed points if $h \neq 0$, and to the discontinuity fixed point if $h=0$. In addition to the nearest neighbor and magnetic field terms in the Hamiltonian, we can include small terms that need not be spin-flip invariant. In this case we prove there is a critical value $h_c$ of the field (which depends on these additional small interactions and the temperature) such that the RG map flows to the discontinuity fixed point if $h=h_c$ and to one of the stable fixed points otherwise. We use our RG map to give a new proof of previous results on the first-order transition, namely, that the free energy is analytic for $h \neq h_c$, and the magnetization is discontinuous at $h = h_c$. The construction of our low temperature RG map, in particular the disentangler, is surprisingly very similar to the construction of the map in arXiv:2107.11464 for the high temperature phase. We also give a pedagogical discussion of some general rigorous transformations for infinite dimensional tensor networks and an overview of the proof of stability of the high temperature fixed point for the RG map in arXiv:2107.11464.
By the Parisi-Sourlas conjecture, the critical point of a theory with random field (RF) disorder is described by a supersymmeric (SUSY) conformal field theory (CFT), related to a $d-2$ dimensional CFT without SUSY. Numerical studies indicate that this is true for the RF $\phi^3$ model but not for RF $\phi^4$ model in $d<5$ dimensions. Here we argue that the SUSY fixed point is not reached because of new relevant SUSY-breaking interactions. We use perturbative renormalization group in a judiciously chosen field basis, allowing systematic exploration of the space of interactions. Our computations agree with the numerical results for both cubic and quartic potential.
We study a renormalization group (RG) map for tensor networks that include two-dimensional lattice spin systems such as the Ising model. Numerical studies of such RG maps have been quite successful at reproducing the known critical behavior. In those numerical studies the RG map must be truncated to keep the dimension of the legs of the tensors bounded. Our tensors act on an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, and our RG map does not involve any truncations. Our RG map has a trivial fixed point which represents the high-temperature fixed point. We prove that if we start with a tensor that is close to this fixed point tensor, then the iterates of the RG map converge in the Hilbert-Schmidt norm to the fixed point tensor. It is important to emphasize that this statement is not true for the simplest tensor network RG map in which one simply contracts four copies of the tensor to define the renormalized tensor. The linearization of this simple RG map about the fixed point is not a contraction due to the presence of so-called CDL tensors. Our work provides a first step towards the important problem of the rigorous study of RG maps for tensor networks in a neighborhood of the critical point.
Current numerical conformal bootstrap techniques carve out islands in theory space by repeatedly checking whether points are allowed or excluded. We propose a new method for searching theory space that replaces the binary information "allowed"/"excluded" with a continuous "navigator" function that is negative in the allowed region and positive in the excluded region. Such a navigator function allows one to efficiently explore high-dimensional parameter spaces and smoothly sail towards any islands they may contain. The specific functions we introduce have several attractive features: they are everywhere well-defined, can be computed with standard methods, and evaluation of their gradient is immediate due to an SDP gradient formula that we provide. The latter property allows for the use of efficient quasi-Newton optimization methods, which we illustrate by navigating towards the 3d Ising island.
We revisit perturbative RG analysis in the replicated Landau-Ginzburg description of the Random Field Ising Model near the upper critical dimension 6. Working in a field basis with manifest vicinity to a weakly-coupled Parisi-Sourlas supersymmetric fixed point (Cardy, 1985), we look for interactions which may destabilize the SUSY RG flow and lead to the loss of dimensional reduction. This problem is reduced to studying the anomalous dimensions of "leaders" -- lowest dimension parts of $S_n$-invariant perturbations in the Cardy basis. Leader operators are classified as non-susy-writable, susy-writable or susy-null depending on their symmetry. Susy-writable leaders are additionally classified as belonging to superprimary multiplets transforming in particular $\textrm{OSp}(d | 2)$ representations. We enumerate all leaders up to 6d dimension $\Delta = 12$, and compute their perturbative anomalous dimensions (up to two loops). We thus identify two perturbations (with susy-null and non-susy-writable leaders) becoming relevant below a critical dimension $d_c \approx 4.2$ - $4.7$. This supports the scenario that the SUSY fixed point exists for all $3 < d \leq 6$, but becomes unstable for $d < d_c$.
Much of our understanding of critical phenomena is based on the notion of Renormalization Group (RG), but the actual determination of its fixed points is usually based on approximations and truncations, and predictions of physical quantities are often of limited accuracy. The RG fixed points can be however given a fully rigorous and non-perturbative characterization, and this is what is presented here in a model of symplectic fermions with a nonlocal ("long-range") kinetic term depending on a parameter $\varepsilon$ and a quartic interaction. We identify the Banach space of interactions, which the fixed point belongs to, and we determine it via a convergent approximation scheme. The Banach space is not limited to relevant interactions, but it contains all possible irrelevant terms with short-ranged kernels, decaying like a stretched exponential at large distances. As the model shares a number of features in common with $\phi^4$ or Ising models, the result can be used as a benchmark to test the validity of truncations and approximations in RG studies. The analysis is based on results coming from Constructive RG to which we provide a tutorial and self-contained introduction. In addition, we prove that the fixed point is analytic in $\varepsilon$, a somewhat surprising fact relying on the fermionic nature of the problem.
We explain how the axioms of Conformal Field Theory are used to make predictions about critical exponents of continuous phase transitions in three dimensions, via a procedure called the conformal bootstrap. The method assumes conformal invariance of correlation functions, and imposes some relations between correlation functions of different orders. Numerical analysis shows that these conditions are incompatible unless the critical exponents take particular values, or more precisely that they must belong to a small island in the parameter space.
Quenched disorder is very important but notoriously hard. In 1979, Parisi and Sourlas proposed an interesting and powerful conjecture about the infrared fixed points with random field type of disorder: such fixed points should possess an unusual supersymmetry, by which they reduce in two less spatial dimensions to usual non-supersymmetric non-disordered fixed points. This conjecture however is known to fail in some simple cases, but there is no consensus on why this happens. In this paper we give new non-perturbative arguments for dimensional reduction. We recast the problem in the language of Conformal Field Theory (CFT). We then exhibit a map of operators and correlation functions from Parisi-Sourlas supersymmetric CFT in $d$ dimensions to a $(d-2)$-dimensional ordinary CFT. The reduced theory is local, i.e. it has a local conserved stress tensor operator. As required by reduction, we show a perfect match between superconformal blocks and the usual conformal blocks in two dimensions lower. This also leads to a new relation between conformal blocks across dimensions. This paper concerns the second half of the Parisi-Sourlas conjecture, while the first half (existence of a supersymmetric fixed point) will be examined in a companion work.
When studying quantum field theories and lattice models, it is often useful to analytically continue the number of field or spin components from an integer to a real number. In spite of this, the precise meaning of such analytic continuations has never been fully clarified, and in particular the symmetry of these theories is obscure. We clarify these issues using Deligne categories and their associated Brauer algebras, and show that these provide logically satisfactory answers to these questions. Simple objects of the Deligne category generalize the notion of an irreducible representations, avoiding the need for such mathematically nonsensical notions as vector spaces of non-integer dimension. We develop a systematic theory of categorical symmetries, applying it in both perturbative and non-perturbative contexts. A partial list of our results is: categorical symmetries are preserved under RG flows; continuous categorical symmetries come equipped with conserved currents; CFTs with categorical symmetries are necessarily non-unitary.
Fixed points of scalar field theories with quartic interactions in $d=4-\varepsilon$ dimensions are considered in full generality. For such theories it is known that there exists a scalar function $A$ of the couplings through which the leading-order beta-function can be expressed as a gradient. It is here proved that the fixed-point value of $A$ is bounded from below by a simple expression linear in the dimension of the vector order parameter, $N$. Saturation of the bound requires a marginal deformation, and is shown to arise when fixed points with the same global symmetry coincide in coupling space. Several general results about scalar CFTs are discussed, and a review of known fixed points is given.
We study complex CFTs describing fixed points of the two-dimensional $Q$-state Potts model with $Q>4$. Their existence is closely related to the weak first-order phase transition and walking RG behavior present in the real Potts model at $Q>4$. The Potts model, apart from its own significance, serves as an ideal playground for testing this very general relation. Cluster formulation provides nonperturbative definition for a continuous range of parameter $Q$, while Coulomb gas description and connection to minimal models provide some conformal data of the complex CFTs. We use one and two-loop conformal perturbation theory around complex CFTs to compute various properties of the real walking RG flow. These properties, such as drifting scaling dimensions, appear to be common features of the QFTs with walking RG flows, and can serve as a smoking gun for detecting walking in Monte Carlo simulations. The complex CFTs discussed in this work are perfectly well defined, and can in principle be seen in Monte Carlo simulations with complexified coupling constants. In particular, we predict a pair of $S_5$-symmetric complex CFTs with central charges $c\approx 1.138 \pm 0.021 i$ describing the fixed points of a 5-state dilute Potts model with complexified temperature and vacancy fugacity.
We discuss walking behavior in gauge theories and weak first-order phase transitions in statistical physics. Despite appearing in very different systems (QCD below the conformal window, the Potts model, deconfined criticality) these two phenomena both imply approximate scale invariance in a range of energies and have the same RG interpretation: a flow passing between pairs of fixed point at complex coupling. We discuss what distinguishes a real theory from a complex theory and call these fixed points complex CFTs. By using conformal perturbation theory we show how observables of the walking theory are computable by perturbing the complex CFTs. This paper discusses the general mechanism while a companion paper [1] will treat a specific and computable example: the two-dimensional Q-state Potts model with Q > 4. Concerning walking in 4d gauge theories, we also comment on the (un)likelihood of the light pseudo-dilaton, and on non-minimal scenarios of the conformal window termination.
Conformal field theories have been long known to describe the fascinating universal physics of scale invariant critical points. They describe continuous phase transitions in fluids, magnets, and numerous other materials, while at the same time sit at the heart of our modern understanding of quantum field theory. For decades it has been a dream to study these intricate strongly coupled theories nonperturbatively using symmetries and other consistency conditions. This idea, called the conformal bootstrap, saw some successes in two dimensions but it is only in the last ten years that it has been fully realized in three, four, and other dimensions of interest. This renaissance has been possible both due to significant analytical progress in understanding how to set up the bootstrap equations and the development of numerical techniques for finding or constraining their solutions. These developments have led to a number of groundbreaking results, including world record determinations of critical exponents and correlation function coefficients in the Ising and $O(N)$ models in three dimensions. This article will review these exciting developments for newcomers to the bootstrap, giving an introduction to conformal field theories and the theory of conformal blocks, describing numerical techniques for the bootstrap based on convex optimization, and summarizing in detail their applications to fixed points in three and four dimensions with no or minimal supersymmetry.
How can a renormalization group fixed point be scale invariant without being conformal? Polchinski (1988) showed that this may happen if the theory contains a virial current -- a non-conserved vector operator of dimension exactly $(d-1)$, whose divergence expresses the trace of the stress tensor. We point out that this scenario can be probed via lattice Monte Carlo simulations, using the critical 3d Ising model as an example. Our results put a lower bound $\Delta_V>5.0$ on the scaling dimension of the lowest virial current candidate $V$, well above 2 expected for the true virial current. This implies that the critical 3d Ising model has no virial current, providing a structural explanation for the conformal invariance of the model.
Hamiltonian Truncation (a.k.a. Truncated Spectrum Approach) is a numerical technique for solving strongly coupled QFTs, in which the full Hilbert space is truncated to a finite-dimensional low-energy subspace. The accuracy of the method is limited only by the available computational resources. The renormalization program improves the accuracy by carefully integrating out the high-energy states, instead of truncating them away. In this paper we develop the most accurate ever variant of Hamiltonian Truncation, which implements renormalization at the cubic order in the interaction strength. The novel idea is to interpret the renormalization procedure as a result of integrating out exactly a certain class of high-energy "tail states". We demonstrate the power of the method with high-accuracy computations in the strongly coupled two-dimensional quartic scalar theory, and benchmark it against other existing approaches. Our work will also be useful for the future goal of extending Hamiltonian Truncation to higher spacetime dimensions.
Hamiltonian Truncation (a.k.a. Truncated Spectrum Approach) is an efficient numerical technique to solve strongly coupled QFTs in d=2 spacetime dimensions. Further theoretical developments are needed to increase its accuracy and the range of applicability. With this goal in mind, here we present a new variant of Hamiltonian Truncation which exhibits smaller dependence on the UV cutoff than other existing implementations, and yields more accurate spectra. The key idea for achieving this consists in integrating out exactly a certain class of high energy states, which corresponds to performing renormalization at the cubic order in the interaction strength. We test the new method on the strongly coupled two-dimensional quartic scalar theory. Our work will also be useful for the future goal of extending Hamiltonian Truncation to higher dimensions d >= 3.
We study the second-order phase transition in the $d$-dimensional Ising model with long-range interactions decreasing as a power of the distance $1/r^{d+s}$. For $s$ below some known value $s_*$, the transition is described by a conformal field theory without a local stress tensor operator, with critical exponents varying continuously as functions of $s$. At $s=s_*$, the phase transition crosses over to the short-range universality class. While the location $s_*$ of this crossover has been known for 40 years, its physics has not been fully understood, the main difficulty being that the standard description of the long-range critical point is strongly coupled at the crossover. In this paper we propose another field-theoretic description which, on the contrary, is weakly coupled near the crossover. We use this description to clarify the nature of the crossover and make predictions about the critical exponents. That the same long-range critical point can be reached from two different UV descriptions provides a new example of infrared duality.
The $d$-dimensional long-range Ising model, defined by spin-spin interactions decaying with the distance as the power $1/r^{d+s}$, admits a second order phase transition with continuously varying critical exponents. At $s = s_*$, the phase transition crosses over to the usual short-range universality class. The standard field-theoretic description of this family of models is strongly coupled at the crossover. We find a new description, which is instead weakly coupled near the crossover, and use it to compute critical exponents. The existence of two complementary UV descriptions of the same long-range fixed point provides a novel example of infrared duality.
We discuss the 4pt function of the critical 3d Ising model, extracted from recent conformal bootstrap results. We focus on the non-gaussianity Q - the ratio of the 4pt function to its gaussian part given by three Wick contractions. This ratio reveals significant non-gaussianity of the critical fluctuations. The bootstrap results are consistent with a rigorous inequality due to Lebowitz and Aizenman, which limits Q to lie between 1/3 and 1.
This is a writeup of lectures given at the EPFL Lausanne in the fall of 2012. The topics covered: physical foundations of conformal symmetry, conformal kinematics, radial quantization and the OPE, and a very basic introduction to conformal bootstrap.
The Fock-space Hamiltonian truncation method is developed further, paying particular attention to the treatment of the scalar field zero mode. This is applied to the two-dimensional Phi^4 theory in the phase where the Z_2-symmetry is spontaneously broken, complementing our earlier study of the Z_2-invariant phase and of the critical point. We also check numerically the weak/strong duality of this theory discussed long ago by Chang.
We consider the continuation of free and interacting scalar field theory to non-integer spacetime dimension d. We find that the correlation functions in these theories are necessarily incompatible with unitarity (or with reflection positivity in Euclidean signature). In particular, the theories contain negative norm states unless d is a positive integer. These negative norm states can be obtained via the OPE from simple positive norm operators, and are therefore an integral part of the theory. At the Wilson-Fisher fixed point the non-unitarity leads to the existence of complex anomalous dimensions. We demonstrate that they appear already at leading order in the epsilon expansion.
We consider the question of conformal invariance of the long-range Ising model at the critical point. The continuum description is given in terms of a nonlocal field theory, and the absence of a stress tensor invalidates all of the standard arguments for the enhancement of scale invariance to conformal invariance. We however show that several correlation functions, computed to second order in the epsilon expansion, are nontrivially consistent with conformal invariance. We proceed to give a proof of conformal invariance to all orders in the epsilon expansion, based on the description of the long-range Ising model as a defect theory in an auxiliary higher-dimensional space. A detailed review of conformal invariance in the d-dimensional short-range Ising model is also included and may be of independent interest.
Conformal multiplets of $\phi$ and $\phi^3$ recombine at the Wilson-Fisher fixed point, as a consequence of the equations of motion. Using this fact and other constraints from conformal symmetry, we reproduce the lowest nontrivial order results for the anomalous dimensions of operators, without any input from perturbation theory.
We defend the Fock-space Hamiltonian truncation method, which allows to calculate numerically the spectrum of strongly coupled quantum field theories, by putting them in a finite volume and imposing a UV cutoff. The accuracy of the method is improved via an analytic renormalization procedure inspired by the usual effective field theory. As an application, we study the two-dimensional Phi^4 theory for a wide range of couplings. The theory exhibits a quantum phase transition between the symmetry-preserving and symmetry-breaking phases. We extract quantitative predictions for the spectrum and the critical coupling and make contact with previous results from the literature. Future directions to further improve the accuracy of the method and enlarge its scope of applications are outlined.
We show how to perform accurate, nonperturbative and controlled calculations in quantum field theory in d dimensions. We use the Truncated Conformal Space Approach (TCSA), a Hamiltonian method which exploits the conformal structure of the UV fixed point. The theory is regulated in the IR by putting it on a sphere of a large finite radius. The QFT Hamiltonian is expressed as a matrix in the Hilbert space of CFT states. After restricting ourselves to energies below a certain UV cutoff, an approximation to the spectrum is obtained by numerical diagonalization of the resulting finite-dimensional matrix. The cutoff dependence of the results can be computed and efficiently reduced via a renormalization procedure. We work out the details of the method for the phi^4 theory in d dimensions with d not necessarily integer. A numerical analysis is then performed for the specific case d = 2.5, a value chosen in the range where UV divergences are absent. By going from weak to intermediate to strong coupling, we are able to observe the symmetry-preserving, symmetry-breaking, and conformal phases of the theory, and perform rough measurements of masses and critical exponents. As a byproduct of our investigations we find that both the free and the interacting theories in non integral d are not unitary, which however does not seem to cause much effect at low energies.
We use the conformal bootstrap to perform a precision study of the operator spectrum of the critical 3d Ising model. We conjecture that the 3d Ising spectrum minimizes the central charge c in the space of unitary solutions to crossing symmetry. Because extremal solutions to crossing symmetry are uniquely determined, we are able to precisely reconstruct the first several Z2-even operator dimensions and their OPE coefficients. We observe that a sharp transition in the operator spectrum occurs at the 3d Ising dimension Delta_sigma=0.518154(15), and find strong numerical evidence that operators decouple from the spectrum as one approaches the 3d Ising point. We compare this behavior to the analogous situation in 2d, where the disappearance of operators can be understood in terms of degenerate Virasoro representations.
We study the conformal bootstrap in fractional space-time dimensions, obtaining rigorous bounds on operator dimensions. Our results show strong evidence that there is a family of unitary CFTs connecting the 2D Ising model, the 3D Ising model, and the free scalar theory in 4D. We give numerical predictions for the leading operator dimensions and central charge in this family at different values of D and compare these to calculations of phi^4 theory in the epsilon-expansion.
We clarify questions related to the convergence of the OPE and conformal block decomposition in unitary Conformal Field Theories (for any number of spacetime dimensions). In particular, we explain why these expansions are convergent in a finite region. We also show that the convergence is exponentially fast, in the sense that the operators of dimension above Delta contribute to correlation functions at most exp(-a Delta). Here the constant a>0 depends on the positions of operator insertions and we compute it explicitly.
We study the constraints of crossing symmetry and unitarity in general 3D Conformal Field Theories. In doing so we derive new results for conformal blocks appearing in four-point functions of scalars and present an efficient method for their computation in arbitrary space-time dimension. Comparing the resulting bounds on operator dimensions and OPE coefficients in 3D to known results, we find that the 3D Ising model lies at a corner point on the boundary of the allowed parameter space. We also derive general upper bounds on the dimensions of higher spin operators, relevant in the context of theories with weakly broken higher spin symmetries.
We discuss an idea of how 3D critical exponents can be determined by Conformal Field Theory techniques.
We revisit the long-standing conjecture that in unitary field theories, scale invariance implies conformality. We explain why the Zamolodchikov-Polchinski proof in D=2 does not work in higher dimensions. We speculate which new ideas might be helpful in a future proof. We also search for possible counterexamples. We consider a general multi-field scalar-fermion theory with quartic and Yukawa interactions. We show that there are no counterexamples among fixed points of such models in 4-epsilon dimensions. We also discuss fake counterexamples, which exist among theories without a stress tensor.
Braneshop, and
the US National Science Foundation.
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