English

Duality and defects in rational conformal field theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2008-11-26 v2 Category Theory

Abstract

We study topological defect lines in two-dimensional rational conformal field theory. Continuous variation of the location of such a defect does not change the value of a correlator. Defects separating different phases of local CFTs with the same chiral symmetry are included in our discussion. We show how the resulting one-dimensional phase boundaries can be used to extract symmetries and order-disorder dualities of the CFT. The case of central charge c=4/5, for which there are two inequivalent world sheet phases corresponding to the tetra-critical Ising model and the critical three-states Potts model, is treated as an illustrative example.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0607247,
  title  = {Duality and defects in rational conformal field theory},
  author = {Jürg Fröhlich and Jürgen Fuchs and Ingo Runkel and Christoph Schweigert},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0607247},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

78 pages, several figures; v2: typos corrected and some references added

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:37:30.552Z