Bootstrapping conformal defect operators on a line (2404.06576v2)

Abstract: We study a conformal field theory with cubic anisotropic symmetry in presence of a line defect. We compute the correlators of the low lying defect operators using Feynman diagrams and derive explicit expressions for the two, three and four point defect correlators at the cubic fixed point in $4-\epsilon$ dimensions to $O(\epsilon)$. We also compute the defect $g$-function for this setup and demonstrate that this is in agreement with the $g$-theorem, which states that the $g$-function is monotonic under the renormalisation group flow along the defect. Next, we focus on conformal bootstrap techniques to determine the CFT data associated with the defect operators, which is the main objective of the paper. We utilize the framework of crossing symmetric Polyakov bootstrap and compute the averaged CFT data to $O(\epsilon)$ up to a finite number of ambiguities. We comment on unmixing the CFT data for the double trace operators at $O(\epsilon)$ and use this to compute the $O(\epsilon^2)$ data. Finally, we study these defect correlators non-perturbatively using numerical methods and isolate them near the free theory limit close to four dimensions.