English

Conformal partial waves in momentum space

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-04-14 v3

Abstract

The decomposition of 4-point correlation functions into conformal partial waves is a central tool in the study of conformal field theory. We compute these partial waves for scalar operators in Minkowski momentum space, and find a closed-form result valid in arbitrary space-time dimension d3d \geq 3 (including non-integer dd). Each conformal partial wave is expressed as a sum over ordinary spin partial waves, and the coefficients of this sum factorize into a product of vertex functions that only depend on the conformal data of the incoming, respectively outgoing operators. As a simple example, we apply this conformal partial wave decomposition to the scalar box integral in d=4d = 4 dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.09825,
  title  = {Conformal partial waves in momentum space},
  author = {Marc Gillioz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.09825},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

39 pages, 3 figures. v2: typos corrected and references added; v3: discussion improved, technical appendix added, results unchanged. Submitted to SciPost Physics

R2 v1 2026-06-23T21:03:31.596Z