Skip to main content

All Questions

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
35 votes
7 answers
6k views

Why is conformal invariance only possible for massless theories?

I'm conscious that this isn't necessarily a research level question, but I've asked this question on mathstackexchange, and received no answer. So I'm trying it here. A usual mantra in field theories ...
onamoonlessnight's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
2k views

Free Boson Correlator $ \langle X(z)X(w) \rangle =- \ln |z - w| $

In physics papers, the massless free boson has a definition involving an action: $$ S(X) = \frac{1}{8\pi} \int d\sigma^2\, \partial X \overline{\partial X}$$ The random functions $X(z)$ are ...
john mangual's user avatar
  • 22.8k
11 votes
2 answers
1k views

How should a mathematician approach the physics literature concerning percolation?

I would like to read some of the physics literature on two-dimensional percolation, however in attempting this I have run into two problems. (1) Physics papers on percolation are (relatively) hard ...
John Pardon's user avatar
  • 18.7k
7 votes
2 answers
626 views

What is the strongest known RSW result in planar percolation?

One of the weakest estimates conjectured to hold for critical planar percolation models (and proved in many cases) is the so-called RSW estimate. RSW estimate is the statement that the probability of ...
John Pardon's user avatar
  • 18.7k
7 votes
0 answers
497 views

Extreme unitary minimal models of conformal field theory

Some of the best understood conformal field theories are the 2D unitary minimal models $\mathcal{M}(m+1,m)$ indexed by the integer $m\ge 2$ and with central charge $$ c=1-\frac{6}{m(m+1)}\ . $$ I ...
Abdelmalek Abdesselam's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
59 views

Convergence of Liouville correlation functions

A key object in Liouville conformal field theory is the random Liouville measure $M$ defined heuristically as $M(d^2x) = :e^{2bX(x)}: d^2x$, where $X$ is a Gaussian free field and $:e^{2bX}:$ denotes ...
user avatar