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Perturbative and semiclassical exploration of dualities / WILL ROBERTS

Swansea University Author: WILL ROBERTS

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DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.62921

Abstract

In this work we consider Abelian gauge fields defined on a (3 + 1)-dimensional bulk spacetime, which is allowed to interact with a matter CFT living on a plane boundary. This gives a family of boundary conformal field theories parameterized by the gauge coupling τ in the upper-half plane. Combining...

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Published: Swansea 2023
Institution: Swansea University
Degree level: Doctoral
Degree name: Ph.D
Supervisor: Kumar, Prem
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa62921
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Abstract: In this work we consider Abelian gauge fields defined on a (3 + 1)-dimensional bulk spacetime, which is allowed to interact with a matter CFT living on a plane boundary. This gives a family of boundary conformal field theories parameterized by the gauge coupling τ in the upper-half plane. Combining this with the recently discovered web of dualities connecting (2 + 1)-dimensional quantum field theories and SL(2, Z) duality in the bulk, one can perform powerful resummations in perturbation theory. We put this to work by considering a free scalar field theory on the boundary, which has a self-duality under τ → − 1 in this setup. Leveraging on this we compute the two-loop anomalous dimension of the mass-squared operator, which is then resummed by imposing the self-duality. Our result can then be extrapolated to τ = 1 which, after a bulk SL(2, Z) transformation, is then related to the 3d Gross-Neveu model by 3d bosonization. In particular this allows us to make a prediction for the anomalous dimension of the mass operator in the 3d Gross-Neveu model.
Keywords: Quantum field theory, condensed matter, duality, boundary conformal field theory
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering