Conformal field theory for particle physicists

Abstract

This is a set of introductory lecture notes on conformal field theory. Unlike most existing reviews on the subject, CFT is presented here from the perspective of a unitary quantum field theory in Minkowski space-time. It begins with a non-perturbative formulation of quantum field theory (Wightman axioms), and then gradually focuses on the implications of scale and special conformal symmetry, all the way to the modern conformal bootstrap. This approach includes topics often left out, such as subtleties of conformal transformations in Minkowski space-time, the construction of Wightman functions and time-ordered correlators both in position- and momentum-space, unitarity bounds derived from the spectral representation, and the appearance of UV and IR divergences.