Conformal Field Theory

This is a lecture series on mathematical aspects of conformal field theory.

Important: the schedule of lectures changed. Starting from February 28 the lectures are given online on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8am California time. Sometimes it will be only on Tuesday, depending on my schedule. From March 13 the lectures will start on 9am California time, that is 19:00 in St. Petersburg. Important: from May 1 the schedule of lectures changes again. They will be held 14:30 Beijing time that is 9:30am St. Petersburg time.

The zoom link for lectures: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/95413298644?pwd=OWlOU09BeEN4amdhMVB5QjRtMjJkUT09

Meeting ID: 954 1329 8644, Passcode: 116804

Here is the tentative syllabus. It is a first iteration and will be edited. The lectures will be once or twice a week for 1,5-2 hours.

Syllabus.

It is clear by now that the syllabus was too optimistic. Lectures go at a slower pace and only about 1/2 of the material will be covered at the end.

Lectures (this list will be expanded as the semester will progress):

Lecture-1
Lecture-2
Lecture-3
Lecture-4
Lecture-5
Lecture-6
Lecture-7
Lecture-8
Lecture-9
Lecture-10
Lecture-11
Lecture-12
Lecture-13
Lecture-14
Lecture-15
Lecture-16
Lecture-18
Lecture-19
Lecture-20
Lecture-21

Files of lectures (this list will be expanded as the semester will progress):

LN-1
LN-2
LN-3
LN-4
LN-5
LN-6
LN-7
LN-8
LN-9
LN-10
LN-11
LN-12
LN-13
LN-14
LN-15
LN-16
LN-17
LN-18
LN-19
LN-20
LN-21

Notes:

  1. In the first lecture I said that objects of the category of cobordisms are Cartesian powers of copies of S^1. It should be “disjoint unions of copies of S^1”. Sorry, 6am in an early hour)). There are more small mistakes in he first lecture (derivatives instead of covariant derivatives) etc. Almost all of them corrected in the second lecture.
  2. The class on Feb. 27 was suffering from the bad internet connection. As a result it morphed into an informal discussion. The proper lecture 4 will be given tomorrow at 8am California time. The plan is to have two lectures most of the weeks starting from now on.
  3. Class on March 9 is cancelled for technical reasons. We will meet at scheduled time next Tuesday and, most likely, next Thursday. After changing to summer time lectures take place at 9am California time.
  4. There are multiple types with fluid pluses, minuses and powers of 2 in lectures. It is usually a great exercise to fix them. I will do it final lecture notes.

Homework is given during the lecture. Eventually it will be organized here.