Anomalies, Conformal Manifolds, and Spheres

Understand

The two-point function of exactly marginal operators leads to a universal contribution to the trace anomaly in even dimensions.

• We study aspects of this trace anomaly, emphasizing its interpretation as a sigma model, whose target space M is the space of conformal field theories (a.k.a.
• the conformal manifold).
• When the underlying quantum field theory is supersymmetric, this sigma model has to be appropriately supersymmetrized.