High Energy Physics

We review recent results on the calculation of one-point functions in dCFTs corresponding to N=4 SYM with domain walls, discussing supersymmetric as well as non-supersymmetric cases. In particular, we address the integrability properties of the theories and the status of the comparison to dual string theoretical computations.

We show that when an external magnetic field parallel to the boundary is applied, Weyl anomaly give rises to a new anomalous current transport near the boundary. Similar to the Casimir effect, this transport phenomena has its origin in the effect of the boundary on the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. The near-boundary current takes universal form for general boundary quantum field theories, which are covariant, gauge invariant, unitary and renormalizable. We verify the universal law of current by studying free QFT and holographic BCFT. Finally, we discuss the so-called "divergence" problem and show that it can be resolved by the law of conservation of charge.

Four-dimensional Yang-Mills and (massive) QCD with minimal N=1 supersymmetry are theories with multiple gapped vacua. Therefore, different regions of space can sit in different vacua and be connected by BPS domain walls. I will present a compact 3D worldvolume description of the walls, capable of classifying all possible BPS walls between vacua and of capturing a 2nd order phase transition as the quark mass is varied. Such a proposal will be confirmed by explicit 4D constructions of BPS domain walls, extending the existing literature.

We study the spectrum of defect conformal field theories (CFTs), and show the existence of universal accumulation points in the defect spectrum. This is achieved by obtaining an inversion formula for the bulk to defect OPE, akin to the Lorentzian inversion formula of Caron-Huot for CFTs without defects. We conclude by applying the result in examples and with an outlook.