Displacement Operators and Constraints on Boundary Central Charges

TY - JOUR

T1 - Displacement Operators and Constraints on Boundary Central Charges

AU - Herzog, Christopher Parker

AU - Huang, Kou-Wei

AU - Jensen, Kristan

PY - 2018/1/8

Y1 - 2018/1/8

N2 - Boundary conformal field theories have several additional terms in the trace anomaly of the stress tensor associated purely with the boundary. We constrain the corresponding boundary central charges in three and four-dimensional conformal field theories in terms of two- and three-point correlation functions of the displacement operator. We provide a general derivation by comparing the trace anomaly with scale dependent contact terms in the correlation functions. We conjecture a relation between the a-type boundary charge in three dimensions and the stress tensor two-point function near the boundary. We check our results for several free theories.

AB - Boundary conformal field theories have several additional terms in the trace anomaly of the stress tensor associated purely with the boundary. We constrain the corresponding boundary central charges in three and four-dimensional conformal field theories in terms of two- and three-point correlation functions of the displacement operator. We provide a general derivation by comparing the trace anomaly with scale dependent contact terms in the correlation functions. We conjecture a relation between the a-type boundary charge in three dimensions and the stress tensor two-point function near the boundary. We check our results for several free theories.

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.021601

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.021601

M3 - Article

SN - 0031-9007

VL - 120

SP - 021601-1 - 021601-6

JO - Physical Review Letters

JF - Physical Review Letters

M1 - 120

ER -