Defect Conformal Manifolds from Phantom (Non-Invertible) Symmetries

Abstract: Conformal defects have a variety of physical applications, serving for instance as universality classes of impurities in critical systems. When they break a continuous symmetry of the system, they arise in families related by exactly marginal deformations. While these defect conformal manifolds are interesting in their own right, many physical properties—such as the reflection coefficient—remain constant across the manifold. After reviewing these known facts, in this talk I will present a new mechanism through which defect conformal manifolds can arise even in the absence of broken continuous symmetries. In this case, physical properties are no longer constant along the manifold, yet they remain calculable and exhibit interesting behaviour. I will illustrate this mechanism with examples in (1+1)D CFTs and comment on possible generalizations to higher dimensions.

condensed mattergeneral relativity and quantum cosmologyHEP - latticeHEP - theorymathematical physicsquantum physics

Audience: researchers in the topic

Quantum Theories of Fields, Matter, and Strings

Series comments: A series of talks covering a broad range of topics in theoretical physics, including high energy theory, condensed matter, and string theory.

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