Bootstrap and Amplitudes: A Hike in the Landscape of Quantum Field Theory Henriette Elvang Randall Laboratory of Physics, Department of Physics, and Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics (LCTP), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA LCPT-20-17 E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. This article is an introduction to two currently very active research programs, the Conformal Bootstrap and Scattering Amplitudes. Rather than attempting full surveys, the emphasis is on common ideas and methods shared by these two seemingly very different programs. In both fields, mathematical and physical constraints are placed directly on the physical observables in order to explore the landscape of possible consistent quantum field theories. We give explicit examples from both programs: the reader can expect to encounter boiling water, ferromagnets, pion scattering, and emergent symmetries on this journey into the landscape of local relativistic quantum field theories. The first part is written for a general physics audience. The second part includes further details, including a new on-shell bottom- 1 up reconstruction of the CP model with the Fubini-Study metric arising from re- summation of the n-point interaction terms derived from amplitudes. The presentation is an extended version of a colloquium given at the Aspen Center for Physics in August 2019. arXiv:2007.08436v2 [hep-th] 6 Aug 2020 Contents 1 Introduction3 2 Water & Magnets5 3 Field Theories: A Brief Survey7 3.1 Examples of Relativistic QFTs . .7 3.2 Conformal Field Theories . 10 3.3 QFT Observables . 11 4 Introduction to the Modern Scattering Amplitudes Program 12 4.1 Modern Amplitudes Program .