Interacting fermions on the half-line: boundary counterterms and boundary corrections

Abstract: Recent years witnessed an extensive development of the theory of the critical point in two-dimensional statistical systems, which allowed to prove {\it existence} and {\it conformal invariance} of the {\it scaling limit} for two-dimensional Ising model and dimers in planar graphs. Unfortunately, we are still far from a full understanding of the subject: so far, exact solutions at the lattice level, in particular determinant structure and exact discrete holomorphicity, play a cucial role in the rigorous control of the scaling limit. The few results about not-integrable (interacting) systems at criticality are still unable to deal with {\it finite domains} and {\it boundary corrections}, which are of course crucial for getting informations about conformal covariance. In this thesis, we address the question of adapting constructive Renormalization Group methods to non-integrable critical systems in $d= 1+1$ dimensions. We study a system of interacting spinless fermions on a one-dimensional semi-infinite lattice, which can be considered as a prototype of the Luttinger universality class with Dirichlet Boundary Conditions. We develop a convergent renormalized expression for the thermodynamic observables in the presence of a quadratic {\it boundary defect} counterterm, polynomially localized at the boundary. In particular, we get explicit bounds on the boundary corrections to the specific ground state energy.