A thermal representation for conformal ladder integrals

Abstract

I discuss the recently discovered representation of conformal four-point ladder integrals in terms of the thermal free energy of free massive scalar fields. These integrals satisfy a novel second-order differential equation in even dimensions $D$ at arbitrary loop order $L$. I also present a simple derivation of the all-loop resummation of conformal ladder integrals for arbitrary $D$. Possible connections to the thermal bootstrap, multiloop calculations, integrability, AdS/CFT and string theory are briefly discussed. This is a proceedings contribution to the Athens Workshop in Theoretical Physics: 10th Anniversary, held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on December 17--19 2025.