Wilson Lines as Superconformal Defects

• Ano de defesa: 2020
• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Giulio Halisson Camillo da
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: CFT; CFT com defeito; defect CFT; deformed Wilson loops; displacement operator; laços de Wilson deformados; operador deslocamento
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/43/43134/tde-24032020-103415/

This dissertation started as a review of the relation between deformations of straight Wilson lines in N=4 super Yang-Mills theory and conformal field theory (CFT) correlators of local operators inserted along that Wilson line, which can then be thought of as a defect defining a defect CFT. These deformations/correlators capture interesting physical content, such as the Bremsstrahlung function of the theory. The work evolved subsequently to trying to extend this relation to the case of the ABJM theory in three dimensions. I start by recalling all the necessary ingredients to understand this relation and perform the corresponding calculations, from the basics of CFTs and CFTs with defects/boundaries to the study of (supersymmetric) Wilson loops in the theories mentioned above. With this groundwork in place, I set up the analysis of 2- and 3-point functions of so-called displacement operators inserted along a 1/2 BPS Wilson line of ABJM theory.