This primer develops Conformal Field Theory (CFT) from scratch, whereby CFT is viewed as any conformally-invariant theory that describes a fixed point of a renormalization group flow in quantum field theory.

The book is divided into four lectures: Lecture 1 addresses the physical foundations of conformal invariance, while Lecture 2 examines the constraints imposed by conformal symmetry on the correlation functions of local operators, presented using the so-called projective null cone - a procedure also known as the embedding formalism. In turn, Lecture 3 focuses on the radial quantization and the operator product expansion, while Lecture 4 offers a very brief introduction to the conformal bootstrap.

Derived from course-based notes, these lectures are intended as a first point of entry to this topic for Master and PhD students alike.

Autorentext
Prof. Vyacheslav (Slava) Rychkov obtained his Ph.D. in 2002 from Princeton University. Since 2012 he has been a staff member at CERN. In 2014 he was awarded the 'New Horizons in Physics Prize' for his work on conformal field theory.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Physical Foundations of Conformal Symmetry.- Conformal kinematics.- Radial quantization and OPE.- Conformal Bootstrap.