CFT Student Meetings

last updated: 13.18 PM, Apr 16, 2019

what Students with some prior exposure to quantum field theory and special relativity meet once a week to systematically discuss conformal field theory.
Additional topics that can be discussed will be listed further below under Suggestions for further meetings. Input welcome!
when weekly, 1.30pm, 4-196, CCIS
contact Jens Boos (boos@ualberta.ca)
organization Jens Boos, Joel Hutchinson, Kento Osuga, Mason Protter
URL http://www.spintwo.net/Courses/CFT-Student-Meetings/

Past meetings

  1. 2019-01-16: outline & introduction [01
  2. 2019-01-23: conformal transformations and the conformal group (Ch. 2 in [1], pp. 5-11) [01, 02]
  3. 2019-01-30: the conformal group in two dimensions (Ch. 2 in [1], pp. 12-15; special conformal transformations: [slides] and [Mathematica notebook])
  4. 2019-02-06: Virasoro algebra, state-operator map [01, 02]
  5. 2019-02-13: state-operator map (cont'd), classical aspects of the free scalar field [01, 02, 03]
    2019-02-20: no meeting (reading week)
  6. 2019-02-27: Ward–Takahashi identities, operator product expansion [01, 02, 03]
  7. 2019-03-06: operator product expansion (recap)
  8. 2019-03-13: primary fields, conformal weights [01, 02]
  9. 2019-03-20: OPE of the energy-momentum tensor, conformal anomaly [01, 02]
  10. 2019-03-27: conformal anomaly (cont'd) [01, 02]
  11. 2019-04-03: AdS/CFT correspondence 1/2: the BTZ black hole, three-dimensional gravity, and its relation to CFT (based on Refs. [6, 7]) [01, 02]
  12. 2019-04-10: AdS/CFT correspondence 2/2: the CFT side [01, 02]
  13. 2019-04-17: summary & cookies [01]

Suggestions for further meetings

  1. ...

Literature

  1. R. Blumenhagen and E. Plauschinn, Introduction to Conformal Field Theory: With Applications to String Theory, (Springer, Dordrecht, 2009), PDF available for all U of A students here.
  2. J. Polchinski, String theory, vol. 1, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998), PDFs available for all U of A students here.
  3. D. Tong, “Introducing Conformal Field Theory” (in two dimensions), PDF available here.
  4. M. Schottenloher, A Mathematical Introduction to Conformal Field Theory, (Springer, Heidelberg, 2008), PDF available for all U of A students here.
  5. P. Ginsparg, “Applied Conformal Field Theory,” hep-th/9108028.
  6. S. Carlip, Quantum gravity in 2+1 dimensions, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998), PDFs available for all U of A students here.
  7. A. Strominger, “Black hole entropy from near horizon microstates,” JHEP 9802, 009 (1998); hep-th/9712251.
  8. additional materials/textbooks: TBD