Conformal invariance on orbifolds and excitations of singularity

TL;DR

This paper explores conformal field theory on 2D orbifolds to analyze effects of geometric singularities, deriving spectra of localized excitations and generalizing boundary states for different singularity classes.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze geometric singularities in orbifolds using conformal field theory and generalizes boundary states to describe various singularities.

Findings

Correlation functions on orbifolds computed

Spectra of localized excitations derived

Singularity classes characterized by boundary state generalizations

Abstract

We study conformal field theory on two-dimensional orbifolds and show this to be an effective way to analyze physical effects of geometric singularities with angular deficits. They are closely related to boundaries and cross caps. Representatives classes of singularities can be described exactly using generalizations of boundary states. From this we compute correlation functions and derive the spectra of excitations localized at the singularities.