Its origins can be traced back on the one hand to statistical mechanics, and on the. Hje on 2d conformal field theories with two characters harsha r. Snchal errata on rst printing these errata and eventual additional ones are listed on the following web page. The relevance to equilibrium statistical mechanics makes. In 1988, segal circulated his manuscript on conformal field theory. Matthias gaberdiel the topics are organized in two main parts. Hampapura 0 1 sunil mukhi 0 1 0 homi bhabha rd, pashan, pune 411 008, india 1 indian institute of science education and research rational cfts are classified by an integer. Senechai, conformal field theory, springerverlag, new york 1997 p. Conformal transformations to begin, well give a few di. The aim of this sequence is to provide the basic tools of field theory to students both theorists and experimentalists with a wide range of interests in physics. Topics include free bosons and fermions, orbifolds, affine lie algebras, coset conformal field theories.
Rehren, konforme quantenfeldtheorie in german, lecture notes, a pdf file is available on rehrens homepage m. For any higher dimension, conformal invariance is nothing more than the invariance under translations, dilations, rotations and special conformal transformations, but, in two dimensions, the conformal virasoroalgebra turns out to be in. Part i deals with conformal eld theory, in particular twodimensional conformal eld theory, while part ii is concerned with. On 2d conformal field theories with two characters pdf. It is quite sort and can serve as a perfect introduction to cft. Schottenloher, a mathematical introduction to conformal field theory, lecture notes in physics, springer 1997. The mo dest goal of these lectures is to mak e the ph ysical literature on cft, b oth the original pap ers and the textb o oks e. Other excellent presentations are found in the book conformal field theory by philippe di francesco, paul mathieu and daniel s.
In practice, we nished by talking about the modular bootstrap approach in twodimensional cfts and simpli cations to the bootstrap program in the limit of large spin. The treatment is selfcontained, pedagogical, and exhaustive, and includes a great deal of background material on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, lie algebras and. Introduction conformal field theory has been an important tool in theoretical physics during the last decade. The treatment is selfcontained, pedagogical, and exhaustive, and includes a great deal of background material on quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, lie algebras and affine lie algebras. Axiomatic conformal field theory now, guided by the axioms of quantum field theory we attempt at constructing a number of axioms for quantum conformal field theory or cft for short. John cardy rudolf peierls centre for theoretical physics 1 keble road, oxford ox1 3np, u. The first half, physics 582, was taught by me in the fall semester 2016. Conformal field theory philippe francesco springer. Filling an important gap in the literature, this comprehensive text develops conformal field theory from first principles. I will talk about the physical foundations of conformal symmetry, relation between scale and conformal invariance, constraints imposed by conformality on the dimensions of local operators and their correlation functions. Conformal field theory philippe di francesco, pierre. The application to string theory was explained by friedan, martinec and shenker in conformal invariance, supersymmetry and string theory, nucl. Ginsparg, 1989, and by john cardy on conformal invariance and statistical mechanics cardy, 1996. Presenting the physics of the most challenging problems in condensed matter using the conceptual framework of quantum field theory, this book is of great interest to physicists in condensed matter and high energy and string theorists, as well as mathematicians.
We relate the energy density of the model to a discrete fermionic correlator and compute its scaling limit by discrete complex analysis methods. This is a question for anyone who is familiar with di francesco s book on conformal field theory. Conformal field theory philippe di francesco, pierre mathieu, david senechal auth. The links below provide errata on the first and second printing on the book. Download limit exceeded you have exceeded your daily download allowance. S en echal, conformal field theory this big yellow book is a ectionately known as the yellow pages. Leja, analytic and harmonic functions, ptw, warsaw 1952 entanglement in 2dcft pawel grabinski 1212.
Conformal field theory errata on rst printing chapter 2. Filling an important gap in the literature, this comprehensive text develops conformal field theory. In two dimensions, there is an infinitedimensional algebra of local conformal transformations, and conformal field theories can sometimes be exactly solved or classified. A collection of over 750,000 text files and documents on a variety of subjects. A very good reference is conformal field theory by di francesco et al, p95107. At rst glance, it comes across as slightly daunting because its big. But you soon realise that its big because it starts at. Conformal field theory phd, di francesco profhugodegaris. Free ly available and operated by the higher intellect project. In this manuscript, segal explained that the central charge of a conformal field theory should be interpreted as twice the power of the determinant line bundle over the moduli space of riemann surfaces with parametrized boundaries. An elementary introduction to conformal field theory is given. It covers the basics of cft in the first 3 chapters and then in the remaining 3 it goes on to introduce the cft concepts that will appear most frequently in string theory. Nov 17, 2003 read gl 22 current superalgebra and nonunitary conformal field theory, physics letters a on deepdyve, the largest online rental service for scholarly research with thousands of academic publications available at your fingertips. If you already have experience with conformal eld theory, you may nd that these.
With string theory being a multidisciplinary field interfacing with high energy physics, mathematics and quantum field theory, this book is ideal for both students with no previous knowledge of the field and scholars from other disciplines who are looking for an introduction to basic concepts. Entanglement entropy in twodimensional conformal field theory. Physics 583 is the second half of a twosemester sequence of courses in quantum field theory. Also, the worldsheet in string theory is described by a twodimensional conformal field theory coupled to the twodimensional gravity. Reading list and book recommendation on conformal field theory. Snchal errata on second printing these errata and eventual additional ones are listed on the following web page. Philippe di francesco author of conformal field theory. I would recommend the book introduction to conformal field theory by blumenhagen and plauschinn. Conformal field theory 5 finally, we should mention that a number of treatments of conformal. Many theories studied in highenergy physics admit the conformal symmetry why. Conformal field theory philippe francesco, philippe di. Conformal field theory graduate texts in contemporary. The many exercises, with a wide spectrum of difficulty and subjects.
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