The 3d Ising Spectrum Minimizes c

Note: Note: Special Day - Tuesday
Speaker: David Simmons-Duffin, Institute for Advanced Study

When: April 15, 2014 (Tue), 03:30PM to 04:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 595

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

Abstract: We use the conformal bootstrap to perform a precision study of the operator spectrum of the critical 3d Ising model. We conjecture that the 3d Ising spectrum minimizes the central charge c in the space of unitary solutions to crossing symmetry. Because extremal solutions to crossing symmetry are uniquely determined, we are able to precisely reconstruct the first several Z2-even operator dimensions and their OPE coefficients. We observe that a sharp transition in the operator spectrum occurs at the 3d Ising dimension Delta_sigma=0.518154(15), and find strong numerical evidence that operators decouple from the spectrum as one approaches the 3d Ising point. We compare this behavior to the analogous situation in 2d, where the disappearance of operators can be understood in terms of degenerate Virasoro representations.