Boundary and Defect Conformal Field Theory: Open Problems and Applications

Europe/London
Chicheley Hall, Newport Pagnell MK16 9JJ, United Kingdom
Matthew Buican (Queen Mary University London), Andrew O'Bannon (University of Southampton)
Description

Organisers: Matthew Buican (Queen Mary University of London) and Andrew O'Bannon (University of Southampton)

The past 5 to 10 years have seen a resurgence of Boundary Conformal Field Theory (BCFT) and Defect Conformal Field Theory (DCFT), particularly in higher dimensions, and on two fronts. First are formal developments, such as integrability, bootstrap, c-theorems, holography, supersymmetry, and more. Second are novel applications, to entanglement entropy, topological insulators, QCD, and more.

However, progress has come largely from groups working independently. The time is ripe for a substantive dialogue on existing problems and promising new research directions, both formal and applied, which could catalyze the field, with potential impacts from cosmology to condensed matter to particle physics.

The purpose of this two-day intensive workshop is therefore to bring together a diverse group of leading theorists in the study of BCFT and DCFT, from the formal/mathematical to the applied, to forge collaborations between different areas, to connect those with problems to those with solutions, to identify common themes and challenges, to further develop promising approaches, and to search for new applications.

The workshop will take place at Chicheley Hall, in Buckinghamshire, UK. For travel information to and from the venue, please visit

the Royal Society's webpage with directions to Chicheley Hall

Participants:

Natan Andrei (Rutgers University) talk slides

Agnese Bissi (Harvard University) talk slides

Matthew Buican (Queen Mary University of London)

John Cardy (University of California at Berkeley and University of Oxford) talk slides

Patrick Dorey (University of Durham) talk slides

Nadav Drukker (King's College London) talk slides

Johanna Erdmenger (University of Wuerzburg) talk slides

Daniel Friedan (Rutgers University and Iceland University) talk slides

Dmitri Fursaev (Dubna State University) talk slides

Anatoly Konechny (Henriot-Watt University and Maxwell Institute, Edinburgh) talk slides

Charlotte Kristjansen (Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen) talk slides

Yu Nakayama (Rikkyo University) talk slides

Andrew O'Bannon (University of Southampton)

Shinsei Ryu (University of Chicago) talk slides

Cornelius Schmidt-Colinet (Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich) talk slides

Volker Schomerus (DESY Hamburg) talk slides

Christoph Schweigert (University of Hamburg) talk slides

Balt van Rees (University of Durham) talk slides

Gerard Watts (King's College London) talk slides

 

This workshop is funded by a generous grant from the Royal Society.

  • Thursday, 7 September
    • 09:00 09:45
      Balt van Rees: On QFTs in AdS
    • 09:45 10:30
      Yu Nakayama: CFTs on Real Projective Space
    • 10:30 11:00
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 11:00 11:45
      Agnese Bissi: Loop Corrections to Supergravity
    • 11:45 12:30
      Dmitri Fursaev: BCFTs: Anomalies, Entanglement, and Holography
    • 12:30 13:30
      Lunch 1h
    • 13:30 14:00
      Free Discussion Time 30m
    • 14:00 14:45
      Nadav Drukker: Energy-momentum Multiplets for Supersymmetric Defects and the Displacement Operator
    • 14:45 15:30
      Anatoly Konechny: RG Boundaries and Interfaces in Ising Field Theory
    • 15:30 16:00
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 16:00 16:45
      Christoph Schweigert: CFT with and without Boundaries: from a Holographic Pictures to Logarithmic Conformal Field Theories
    • 16:45 17:30
      Gerard Watts: Defects in the Tri-critical Ising Model
    • 17:30 18:00
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 18:00 18:45
      Patrick Dorey: Breaking Integrability at the Boundary
    • 18:45 19:00
      Break
    • 19:00 21:00
      Dinner 2h
  • Friday, 8 September
    • 09:00 09:45
      Natan Andrei: Quantum Impurities in Interacting Environment
    • 09:45 10:30
      Volker Schomerus: Harmony of Defects
    • 10:30 11:00
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 11:00 11:45
      Johanna Erdmenger: A Kondo Model Within Gauge/Gravity Duality
    • 11:45 12:30
      Charlotte Kristjansen: One- and Two-point Functions in AdS/dCFT and Integrability
    • 12:30 13:30
      Lunch
    • 13:30 14:00
      Free Discussion Time 30m
    • 14:00 14:45
      John Cardy: RG Flows and Boundary States in 2d Systems
    • 14:45 15:30
      Shinsei Ryu: BCFT and SPT phases
    • 15:30 16:00
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 16:00 16:45
      Daniel Friedan: A New Kind of Quantum Field Theory of (n-1)-dimensional Defects in 2n Dimensions
    • 16:45 17:30
      Cornelius Schmidt-Colinet: Double Trace Interfaces
    • 17:30 18:00
      Coffee Break 30m
    • 18:00 19:00
      Break 1h
    • 19:00 21:00
      Dinner 2h