ScalingStacks

2.1 Moduli space of Conformal Field Theories [03Q6]

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2.1 Moduli space of Conformal Field Theories

For a given CFT one can consider its group of symmetries (i.e. automorphisms of the space H=⊕p,qHp,qH=\oplus_{p,q}H^{p,q} preserving all the structures). It is expected that the group of symmetries is a compact Lie group of dimension less or equal than d​i​m​H1,0dim\,H^{1,0}.

Let us fix c0≥0c_{0}\geq 0 and Em​i​n>0E_{min}>0, and consider the moduli space ℳc≤c0Em​i​n{\cal M}_{c\leq c_{0}}^{E_{min}} of all irreducible CFTs with the central charge c≤c0c\leq c_{0} and

m​i​n​{p+q>0|Hp,q≠0}≥Em​i​nmin\{p+q>0|H^{p,q}\neq 0\}\geq E_{min}

It is expected that ℳc≤c0Em​i​n{\cal M}_{c\leq c_{0}}^{E_{min}} is a compact real analytic stack of finite local dimension. The dimension of the base of the minimal versal deformation of a given CFT is less or equal than d​i​m​H1,1dim\,H^{1,1}. We define ℳc≤c0=∪Em​i​n>0ℳc≤c0Em​i​n{\cal M}_{c\leq c_{0}}=\cup_{E_{min}>0}{\cal M}_{c\leq c_{0}}^{E_{min}}. We would like to compactify this stack by adding boundary components corresponding to certain asymptotic descriptions of the theories with Em​i​n→0E_{min}\to 0. The compactified space is expected to be a compact stack ℳ¯c≤c0\overline{{\cal M}}_{c\leq c_{0}}. In what follows we will loosely use the word “space” instead of the word “stack”.

Remark 2

There are basically only two classes of rigorously defined CFTs: the rational theories (RCFT) and the lattice CFTs. Considerations of this paper correspond to the case of sigma models which produce neither of these. The description of sigma models as path integrals corresponding to certain Lagrangians did not give yet a mathematically satisfactory construction. As we will explain below, there is an alternative way to speak about sigma models in terms of degenerations of CFTs.

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