Speaker
Description
The study of line defects in conformal field theories (CFTs) is a crucial area of research, as they describe a wide range of physical phenomena from magnetic impurities in condensed-matter systems to the radiation of moving quarks in high-energy physics. A notable class of defects, called conformal defects, breaks the conformal symmetry in a controlled way, with the residual symmetry imposing significant constraints on observables.
In this talk, I report on recent developments in the study of line defect CFTs at finite temperature. Focusing on the specific case of line defects wrapping the thermal circle, we identify the OPE data necessary to solve the correlation functions of a given model. From consistency conditions on two-point functions, we derive novel sum rules that can be used to set up a bootstrap problem. These results are illustrated for free theories and for the $O(N)$ model, where computations can be performed analytically.
