Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: These notes were presented at the Young Researchers School (YRS) in Maynooth in April 2024 and provide an introduction to conformal field theory (CFT), boundary CFT and Defect CFT. This class is mostly self-contained and includes exercises with solutions. The first part of these notes is concerned with the basics of CFT, and was taught by the author during the pre-school for the YRS 2024. Here the aim is to convey the notion of conformal families, their fusion and the construction of partition functions. The second part of these notes is dedicated to boundaries and defects in CFT and was presented by the author at the main school. As far as boundaries are concerned, emphasis is placed on boundary operators and their state spaces, as well as the boundary state formalism with the Cardy constraint. Topological defects are discussed in analogy, i.e. defect state spaces and the relevant consistency constraint are derived. Verlinde lines are constructed as their simplest solution and their properties are inspected.
Author: Christian Northe
Language: English
Subfield: Geometry and Topology
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,165
Funders: European Commission, Science Foundation Ireland, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Università degli Studi di Padova, Israel Science Foundation, Akademie Věd České Republiky, HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme, H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, HORIZON EUROPE European Innovation Council
Awards: G7253040719, G8532854944, G8708732932
OpenAlex ID: W4405587473