Unraveling Infinite Dimensional Symmetries in 4D N=1 SCFTs

by Dr Jingxiang Wu (University of Oxford)

Wednesday 13 Dec 2023, 10:10 → 11:30 Asia/Shanghai

B105 (CHEP)

The conformal anomaly 'c' in 2D CFT famously coincides with the central extension of the Virasoro algebra. In higher dimensions, while the concept of conformal anomalies is well understood, there lacks an analogue of central extensions. In this talk, I will review the framework of the holomorphic twist and its role in unveiling the algebraic structure within the minimally protected subsector of any N=1 SCFT in 4D. Specifically, the flavour and conformal symmetry algebras are enhanced to infinite-dimensional higher Kac Moody and higher Virasoro symmetry algebras respectively. Through explicit computations within SCFTs, we show that these symmetry algebra's central extensions precisely encode the conformal anomalies 'a' and 'c', along with the flavour central charges of the physical 4D theory.

Bio: Jingxiang Wu received his PhD in physics from Perimeter Institute in 2021 under the supervision of Davide Gaiotto.  He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. He is broadly interested in formal aspects of quantum field theory with emphasis on the dualities, defects, symmetries and how they unveil the nonperturbative physics.

Tencent Meeting：993-814-089

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