Boundaries and Defects in Quantum Field Theory

Boundaries and defects play central roles in quantum field theory (QFT) both as means to make contact with nature and as tools to constrain and understand QFT itself. Boundaries in QFT can be used to model impurities and also the finite extent of sample sizes, while interfaces allow for different phases of matter to interact in a controllable way. More formally, these structures shed light on the structure of QFT by providing new examples of dualities and renormalization group flows.  Broadly speaking, this meeting will focus on three areas: 1) formal and applied aspects of boundary and defect conformal field theory, from anomalies and c-theorems to topological insulators, 2) supersymmetry and duality, from exact computations of new observables to the construction of new theories, and 3) QFT in curved space and gravity, from holographic computations of entanglement entropy to ideas in quantum information theory.

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