From critical phenomena to quantum gravity, conformal field theories describe the universal scale-invariant structures that lie at the heart of theoretical physics. The conformal bootstrap is the powerful idea, dating back to the 70’s, that one can use fundamental consistency conditions to constrain, solve, and map out the space of conformal field theories. In this talk I will describe how the modern incarnation of the conformal bootstrap can perform precise non-perturbative calculations of critical exponents in strongly-interacting field theories in a variety of dimensions without reference to a microscopic Lagrangian or Hamiltonian, highlighting recent results.

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Recording of Prof. Poland's talk: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/ylp33