Theory HEP Seminar

The Conformal Bootstrap at Nonzero Temperature

Raghu Mahajan

Princeton University

This talk will be about an approach to constraining conformal field theory (CFT) data at nonzero temperature using the conformal bootstrap. We focus on thermal one- and two-point functions of local operators on the plane. By studying the analytic properties of thermal two-point functions, we derive a "thermal inversion formula" whose output is the set of thermal one-point functions for all operators appearing in a given OPE. This involves identifying a kinematic regime which is the analog of the Regge regime for vacuum four-point functions. We test the formula in mean field theory and the critical O(N) model at leading order in 1/N. We explain how the inversion formula and KMS condition may be combined to constrain CFTs at finite temperature.