Weyl Anomalies of Four Dimensional Conformal Boundaries and Defects

Understand

Motivated by questions about quantum information and classification of quantum field theories, we consider Conformal Field Theories (CFTs) in spacetime dimension $d\geq 5$ with a conformally-invariant spatial boundary (BCFTs) or $4$-dimensional conformal defect (DCFTs).

• We determine the boundary or defect contribution to the Weyl anomaly using the standard algorithm, which includes imposing Wess-Zumino consistency and fixing finite counterterms.
• These boundary/defect contributions are built from the intrinsic and extrinsic curvatures, as well as the pullback of the ambient CFT's Weyl tensor.
• For a co-dimension one boundary or defect (i.e.