We systematically study correlators of a generic conformal field theory with a global O(2) symmetry in a sector of large global charge. We focus in particular on three- and four-point correlators with conserved current insertions sandwiched between spinful excited states corresponding to phonons over the large-charge vacuum. We also discuss loop corrections to the scaling dimensions and observe multiple logarithms in even dimensions.

We show that the standard notion of entanglement is not defined for gravitationally anomalous two-dimensional theories because they do not admit a local tensor factorization of the Hilbert space into local Hilbert spaces. Qualitatively, the modular flow cannot act consistently and unitarily in a finite region, if there are different numbers of states with a given energy traveling in the two opposite directions. We make this precise by decomposing it into two observations: First, a two-dimensional CFT admits a consistent quantization on a space with boundary only if it is not anomalous. Second, a local tensor factorization always leads to a definition of consistent, unitary, energy-preserving boundary condition. As a corollary we establish a generalization of the Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem to all two-dimensional unitary local QFTs: No continuum quantum field theory in two dimensions can admit a lattice regulator unless its gravitational anomaly vanishes. We also show that the conclusion can be generalized to six dimensions by dimensional reduction on a four-manifold of nonvanishing signature. We advocate that these points be used to reinterpret the gravitational anomaly quantum-information-theoretically, as a fundamental obstruction to the localization of quantum information.

In this review we study quantum field theories and conformal field theories with global symmetries in the limit of large charge for some of the generators of the symmetry group. At low energy the sectors of the theory with large charge are described by a hybrid form of Goldstone’s theorem, involving its relativistic and non-relativistic forms. The associated effective field theory in the infrared allows the computation of anomalous dimensions, and operator product expansion coefficients in a well defined expansion in inverse powers of the global charge. This applies even when the initial theory does not have a reliable semiclassical approximation. The large quantum number expansion complements, and may provide an alternative approach to the bootstrap and numerical treatments. We will present some general features of the symmetry breaking patterns and the low-energy effective actions, and a fairly large number of examples exhibiting the salient features of this method.

We study the $O(4)$ Wilson–Fisher fixed point in $2+1$ dimensions in fixed large-charge sectors identified by products of two spin-$j$ representations $(j_L,j_R)$. Using effective field theory we derive a formula for the conformal dimensions $D(j_L, j_R)$ of the leading operator in terms of two constants, $c_{ 3 / 2}$ and $c_{ 1 / 2}$, when the sum $j_L + j_R$ is much larger than the difference $|j_L-j_R|$. We compute $D(j_L,j_R)$ when $j_L= j_R$ with Monte Carlo calculations in a discrete formulation of the $O(4)$ lattice field theory, and show excellent agreement with the predicted formula and estimate $c_{ 3 / 2}=1.068(4)$ and $c_{ 1 / 2}=0.083(3)$.