Sandipan Kundu - 1/2 Causality in Conformal Field Theory

Causality places nontrivial constraints on QFT in Lorentzian signature, for example fixing the signs of certain terms in the low energy Lagrangian. In these pedagogical lectures, I will explore causality constraints on conformal field theory. First, I will show how causality is encoded in crossing symmetry and reflection positivity of Euclidean correlators, and derive constraints on the interactions of low-lying operators directly from the conformal bootstrap. Then, I will explain the connection between these causality constraints and the averaged null energy condition. Finally, I will use causality to show that the averaged null energy is positive in interacting quantum field theory in flat spacetime. Based on arXiv:1509.00014, arXiv:1601.07904, arXiv:1610.05308.