Analytic bootstrap for magnetic impurities

Abstract

We study the $O(3)$ critical model and the free theory of a scalar triplet in the presence of a magnetic impurity. We use analytic bootstrap techniques to extract results in the $\varepsilon$-expansion. First, we extend by one order in perturbation theory the computation of the beta function for the defect coupling in the free theory. Then, we analyze in detail the low-lying spectrum of defect operators, focusing on their perturbative realization when the defect is constructed as a path-ordered exponential. After this, we consider two different bulk two-point functions and we compute them using the defect dispersion relation. For a free bulk theory, we are able to fix the form of the correlator at all orders in $\varepsilon$. In particular, taking $\varepsilon\to1$, we can show that in $d=3$ one does not have a consistent and non-trivial defect CFT. For an interacting bulk, we compute the correlator up to second order in $\varepsilon$. Expanding these results in the bulk and defect block expansions, we are able to extract an infinite set of defect CFT data. We discuss low-spin ambiguities that affect every result computed through the dispersion relation and we use a combination of consistency conditions and explicit diagrammatic calculations to fix this ambiguity.