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Monodromy Defects in Free Field Theories

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arxiv 2104.01220 v2 pith:AVKTSEM7 submitted 2021-04-02 hep-th

Monodromy Defects in Free Field Theories

classification hep-th
keywords defectfreedefectsfieldfunctionstheoriestheoryanomaly
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We study co-dimension two monodromy defects in theories of conformally coupled scalars and free Dirac fermions in arbitrary $d$ dimensions. We characterise this family of conformal defects by computing the one-point functions of the stress-tensor and conserved current for Abelian flavour symmetries as well as two-point functions of the displacement operator. In the case of $d=4$, the normalisation of these correlation functions are related to defect Weyl anomaly coefficients, and thus provide crucial information about the defect conformal field theory. We provide explicit checks on the values of the defect central charges by calculating the universal part of the defect contribution to entanglement entropy, and further, we use our results to extract the universal part of the vacuum R\'enyi entropy. Moreover, we leverage the non-supersymmetric free field results to compute a novel defect Weyl anomaly coefficient in a $d=4$ theory of free $\mathcal{N}=2$ hypermultiplets. Including singular modes in the defect operator product expansion of fundamental fields, we identify notable relevant deformations in the singular defect theories and show that they trigger a renormalisation group flow towards an IR fixed point with the most regular defect OPE. We also study Gukov-Witten defects in free $d=4$ Maxwell theory and show that their central charges vanish.

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Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Monodromy defects in Chern-Simons theory and Holography

    hep-th 2026-07 accept novelty 8.0

    Monodromy defects in charge-conjugation-symmetric Chern-Simons theory are labeled by twisted affine representations, realize a Z2-crossed category, and are holographically dual to orientifolds of the resolved conifold...

  2. When Symmetries Twist: Anomaly Inflow on Monodromy Defects

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Monodromy defects for anomalous symmetries are defined as domain walls between symmetry generators and anomaly-induced topological orders, resulting in protected chiral edge modes and adiabatic pumping of gapless degr...

  3. Conformal Defects in Neural Network Field Theories

    hep-th 2025-12 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    The paper introduces a formalism for constructing conformally invariant defects in Neural Network Field Theories, demonstrates it on two toy scalar models, and provides a neural-network reading of a defect OPE expansi...

  4. When Symmetries Twist: Anomaly Inflow on Monodromy Defects

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Anomaly inflow on monodromy defects in anomalous symmetry theories defines them as domain walls inducing topological order, yielding protected chiral edge modes and adiabatic pumping of gapless degrees of freedom, ver...

  5. Monodromy Defects for Electric-Magnetic Duality, Hyperbolic Space, and Lines

    hep-th 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Monodromy defects in Maxwell theory are analyzed via mapping to hyperbolic space, recovering the defect primary spectrum and showing that Wilson/'t Hooft lines terminate on defects, become decomposable, and follow Che...

  6. Universalities of Defects in Quantum Field Theories

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    A dissertation synthesizing universal aspects of defect dynamics in QFT through symmetry principles across defect RG flows, effective strings, and quantum gas impurities.