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Topological Defect Lines in Two Dimensional Fermionic CFTs

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-11-29 v4 Strongly Correlated Electrons Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We consider topological defect lines (TDLs) in two-dimensional fermionic conformal field theories (CFTs). Besides inheriting all the properties of TDLs in bosonic CFTs, TDLs in fermionic CFTs could host fermionic defect operators at their endpoints and junctions. Furthermore, there is a new type of TDLs, called q-type TDLs, that have no analog in bosonic CFTs. Their distinguishing feature is an extra one-dimensional Majorana fermion living on the worldline of the TDLs. The properties of TDLs in fermionic CFTs are captured in the mathematical language of the super fusion category. We propose a classification of the rank-2 super fusion categories generalizing the Z8\mathbb Z_8 classification for the anomalies of Z2\mathbb Z_2 symmetry. We explicitly solve the F-moves for all the nontrivial categories, and derive the corresponding spin selection rules that constrain the spectrum of the defect operators. We find the full set of TDLs in the standard fermionic minimal models and a partial set of TDLs in the two exceptional models, which give CFT realizations to the rank-2 super fusion categories. Finally, we discuss a constraint on the renormalization group flow that preserves a q-type TDL.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.02757,
  title  = {Topological Defect Lines in Two Dimensional Fermionic CFTs},
  author = {Chi-Ming Chang and Jin Chen and Fengjun Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.02757},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

48+21 pages, added references, added sec.4.2 and sec.5, minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:29:11.917Z