English

Finite-rank conformal quantum mechanics

Mathematical Physics 2026-05-22 v6 High Energy Physics - Theory math.MP

Abstract

In this work, we study the simplest example of the landscape of conformal field theories: one-dimensional CFTs with finite-dimensional state space. Following the definition of quantum field theory given by G. Segal, we formulate the condition under which a one-dimensional QFT (quantum mechanics) possesses conformal symmetry, and we give a complete classification of conformal Hamiltonians with finite rank. It turns out that correlation functions in such theories are polynomial functions of the underlying geometric data. Moreover, the one-dimensional conformal Ward identities determine their scaling behavior, so that the correlators of the conformal observables are, in fact, homogeneous polynomials.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.06501,
  title  = {Finite-rank conformal quantum mechanics},
  author = {Maxim Gritskov and Saveliy Timchenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.06501},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:13:07.117Z