TH Theoretical Seminar

Scale ⇒ conformal invariance, RG-cycles, and all that ...

by Prof. Benjamin Grinstein (University of California San Diego)

Wednesday, 14 November 2012 from to (Europe/Zurich)
at CERN ( 4-3-006 - TH Conference Room )
Description
It has been known for three decades that  unitary  relativistic quantum field theories in 2 space-time dimensions that are scale invariant are also necessarily conformal.  In this talk I will explain our recent (perturbative) proof of the analogous statement for theories in four space-time dimensions.  In the course of the investigation that led to the proof we discovered recursive renormalization group trajectories (limit cycles or ergodicity), which we now understand to describe conformal field theories.