English

QFT as a set of ODEs

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-05-19 v3 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Correlation functions of local operators in Quantum Field Theory (QFT) on hyperbolic space can be fully characterized by the set of QFT data {Δi,Cijk,bjO^}\lbrace \Delta_i,C_{ijk},b^{\hat{\mathcal{O}}}_j\rbrace. These are the scaling dimensions of boundary operators Δi\Delta_i, the boundary Operator Product Expansion (OPE) coefficients CijkC_{ijk} and the Boundary Operator Expansion (BOE) coefficients bjO^b^{\hat{\mathcal{O}}}_j that characterize how each bulk operator O^\hat{\mathcal{O}} can be expanded in terms of boundary operators Oj\mathcal{O}_j.For simplicity, we focus on two dimensional QFTs and derive a universal set of first order Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) that encode the variation of the QFT data under an infinitesimal change of a bulk relevant coupling. In principle, our ODEs can be used to follow a Renormalization Group (RG) flow starting from a solvable QFT into a strongly coupled phase and to the flat space limit.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.04310,
  title  = {QFT as a set of ODEs},
  author = {Manuel Loparco and Grégoire Mathys and Joao Penedones and Jiaxin Qiao and Xiang Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.04310},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

v1: 76 pages + 7 appendices, 30 figures, one ancillary Mathematica file; v2: minor typos fixed; v3: assumption paragraph added in intro, minor typos fixed

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:55:02.523Z