English

Line and surface defects for the free scalar field

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-05-03 v3

Abstract

For a single free scalar field in d2d \geq 2 dimensions, almost all the unitary conformal defects must be `trivial' in the sense that they cannot hold interesting dynamics. The only possible exceptions are monodromy defects in d4d \geq 4 and co-dimension three defects in d5d \geq 5. As an intermediate result we show that the nn-point correlation functions of a conformal theory with a generalized free spectrum must be those of the generalized free theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.02413,
  title  = {Line and surface defects for the free scalar field},
  author = {Edoardo Lauria and Pedro Liendo and Balt C. van Rees and Xiang Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.02413},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

41 pages. v3: matches journal version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:20:00.986Z