23.11.2020 (Monday)

Lonti 2020: Conformal blocks in two dimensions

Regular Seminar Gerard Watts (KCL)

at:
14:00 KCL
room Youtube
abstract:

​​Conformal blocks are the building blocks of conformal field theories, the key ingredients of correlation functions and knowledge of these blocks is central to the conformal bootstrap. This lecture covers some general results before quickly specialising to two-dimensions. It discusses the implications of global conformal invariance and then the larger and more constraining Virasoro algebra symmetry. It introduces various methods of calculation including brute force, differential equations, recursion relations and closed formulae - and some aspects of bootstrap techniques.