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Boundary Condition Changing Operators in Conformal Field Theory and Condensed Matter Physics

Ian Affleck

hep-tharXiv:hep-th/9611064

Abstract

Boundary condition changing operators in conformal field theory describe various types of "sudden switching" problems in condensed matter physics such as the X-ray edge singularity. We review this subject and give two extensions of previous work. A general derivation of a connection between the X-ray edge singularity, the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe and finite-size scaling of energies is given. The formalism is also extended to include boundstates.

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