Abstract
We study a surface defect in the free and critical O(N) vector models, defined by adding a quadratic perturbation localized on a two-dimensional subspace of the d-dimensional CFT. We compute the beta function for the corresponding defect renormalization group (RG) flow, and provide evidence that at long distances the system flows to a nontrivial defect conformal field theory (DCFT). We use epsilon and large N expansions to compute several physical quantities in the DCFT, finding agreement across different expansion methods. We also compute the defect free energy, and check consistency with the so-called b-theorem for RG flows on surface defects.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Gabriel Cuomo and Max Metlitski for useful discussions, and Avia Raviv-Moshe and Siwei Zhong for sharing a draft of their work. The research of SG and BL is supported in part by the US NSF under Grant No. PHY-2209997.
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Giombi, S., Liu, B. Notes on a surface defect in the O(N) model. J. High Energ. Phys. 2023, 4 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2023)004
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP12(2023)004