In this article we try to give a condensed panoramic view of the development of two-dimensional rational conformal field theory in the last twenty-five years.
The idea of "summing over all intermediate states" that is central for implementing locality in quantum systems can be realized by coend constructions. In the concrete case of systems of conformal blocks for a certain class of conformal vertex algebras, one deals with coends in functor categories. Working with these coends involves quite a few subtleties which, even though they have in principle already been understood twenty years ago, have not been sufficiently appreciated by the conformal field theory community.
We consider classical and quantum integrable sigma models and their relations with the solutions of renormalization group equations. We say that an integrable sigma model possesses the "nice" duality property if the dual quantum field theory has the weak coupling region. As an example, we consider the deformed $CP(n-1)$ sigma model with additional quantum degrees of freedom. We formulate the dual integrable field theory and use perturbed conformal field theory, perturbation theory, $S$-matrix, Bethe Ansatz and renormalization group methods to show that this field theory has the "nice" duality …
We calculate the time dependence of the reflected entropy of two disconnected regions after a global quench in $(1+1)$-dimensional conformal field theories and in large temperature limit. For rational conformal field theories, we find that the time evolution of the reflected entropy is the same as that of the mutual information. We get the same result for holographic theories in the limit where the separation between disconnected regions is much smaller than their respective sizes. We discuss how this result is consistent with the quasi-particle picture of Calabrese and Cardy \cite{calabrese-c…
Polynomial Fermionic Forms for the Branching Functions of the Rational Coset Conformal Field Theories $\widehat{su}(2)_{M}\times \widehat{su}(2)_{N}/\widehat{su}(2)_{M+N}$}
We define Modular Linear Differential Equations (MLDE) for the level-two congruence subgroups $Γ_\vartheta$, $Γ^0(2)$ and $Γ_0(2)$ of $\text{SL}_2(\mathbb Z)$. Each subgroup corresponds to one of the spin structures on the torus. The pole structures of the fermionic MLDEs are investigated by exploiting the valence formula for the level-two congruence subgroups. We focus on the first and second order holomorphic MLDEs without poles and use them to find a large class of `Fermionic Rational Conformal Field Theories', which have non-negative integer coefficients in the $q$-series expansion of thei…
The classification scheme for rational conformal field theories, given by the Mathur-Mukhi-Sen (MMS) program, identifies a rational conformal field theory by two numbers: $(n, l)$. $n$ is the number of characters of the rational conformal field theory. The characters form linearly independent solutions to a modular linear differential equation (which is also labelled by $(n, l)$); the Wronskian index $l$ is a non-negative integer associated to the structure of zeroes of the Wronskian. In this paper, we compute the $(n, l)$ values for three classes of well-known CFTs viz. the WZW CFTs, the Vira…
We study 't Hooft anomalies of symmetry-enriched rational conformal field theories (RCFT) in (1+1)d. Such anomalies determine whether a theory can be realized in a truly (1+1)d system with on-site symmetry, or on the edge of a (2+1)d symmetry-protected topological phase. RCFTs with the identical symmetry actions on their chiral algebras may have different 't Hooft anomalies due to additional symmetry charges on local primary operators. To compute the relative anomaly, we establish a precise correspondence between (1+1)d non-chiral RCFTs and (2+1)d doubled symmetry-enriched topological (SET) ph…
We study the connection between Rational Conformal Field Theory (RCFT), $N=2$ massive supersymmetric field theory, and solvable Interaction Round the Face (IRF) lattice models. Specifically, one identifies the fusion rings with the chiral rings. The theories so obtained are conjectured, and largely shown, to be integrable. A variety of examples and the structure of the metric in moduli space are given. The kink scattering theory is given by the Boltzmann weights of an IRF model, which is built entirely in terms of the conformal data of the original RCFT. This procedure produces all solvable IR…
We study deformations of the quantum conformal mechanics of De Alfaro-Fubini-Furlan with rational additional potential term generated by applying the generalized Darboux-Crum-Krein-Adler transformations to the quantum harmonic oscillator and by using the method of dual schemes and mirror diagrams. In this way we obtain infinite families of isospectral and non-isospectral deformations of the conformal mechanics model with special values of the coupling constant $g=m(m+1)$, $m\in {\mathbb N}$, in the inverse square potential term, and for each completely isospectral or gapped deformation given b…
Hecke operators relate characters of rational conformal field theories (RCFTs) with different central charges, and extend the previously studied Galois symmetry of modular representations and fusion algebras. We show that the conductor $N$ of a RCFT and the quadratic residues mod $N$ play an important role in the computation and classification of Galois permutations. We establish a field correspondence in different theories through the picture of effective central charge, which combines Galois inner automorphisms and the structure of simple currents. We then make a first attempt to extend Heck…