2

I have studied conformal field theories in two dimensions and I understand the basic idea behind conformal blocks too. But I never completely realized what they are when it comes to computing them. Can someone explain at least one concrete example or refer to some articles where it has been done for a particular theory.

Qmechanic
  • 220,844
Physics Moron
  • 1,552
  • 1
  • 11
  • 21

1 Answers1

2

It can be rather involved. A lot of technical progress as been on this subject leading up to the modern conformal bootstrap work. Something you can exploit is that these functions should behave like correlation functions and thus are eigenfunctions of the conformal Casimir. That gives you differential equations which in some cases, especially in $D=2$ and $D=4$, you can solve.

See: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0309180 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.6194

SM Kravec
  • 881