Bounds on SCFTs from Conformal Perturbation Theory

Understand

The operator product expansion (OPE) in 4d (super)conformal field theory is of broad interest, for both formal and phenomenological applications.

• In this paper, we use conformal perturbation theory to study the OPE of nearly-free fields coupled to SCFTs.
• Under fairly general assumptions, we show that the OPE of a chiral operator of dimension $\Delta = 1+\epsilon$ with its complex conjugate always contains an operator of dimension less than $2 \Delta$.
• Our bounds apply to Banks-Zaks fixed points and their generalizations, as we illustrate using several examples.