Spinning operators and defects in conformal field theory

Understand

We study the kinematics of correlation functions of local and extended operators in a conformal field theory.

• We present a new method for constructing the tensor structures associated to primary operators in an arbitrary bosonic representation of the Lorentz group.
• The recipe yields the explicit structures in embedding space, and can be applied to any correlator of local operators, with or without a defect.
• We then focus on the two-point function of traceless symmetric primaries in the presence of a conformal defect, and explain how to compute the conformal blocks.