Physics (Internal)

Applying Conformal Field Theory Techniques to Solving 2D QCD Analytically

This event is part of the PhD Final Oral Exams.

Examining Committee: Emanuel Katz, Andrew Cohen, Martin Schmaltz, Claudio Chamon, Edward Kearns

Abstract:

We formulate an analytic approach to solving two-dimensional gauge theories. We find that in theories with confinement, in a conformal operator basis, the decoupling of high scaling-dimension operators from the low-energy spectrum occurs exponentially fast in their scaling-dimension. Consequently the low-energy spectrum of a strongly coupled system like QCD can be calculated using a truncated conformal basis, to an accuracy parametrized exponentially by the cutoff dimension. We apply the conformal basis approach in two models, a two-dimensional QCD with an adjoint fermion at large N, and a two-dimensional QCD with a fundamental fermion at finite N. It is shown that the low energy spectrum converges efficiently in both cases.