Speaker
Description
In the conformal bootstrap, one typically focuses on static data: the scaling dimensions and OPE coefficients that characterize a given CFT. In this talk, I argue that the bootstrap philosophy can be fruitfully extended to real-time dynamics. I will study dynamical phase transitions, defined as non-analytic behavior of observables under Lorentzian time evolution. As a concrete example, I consider the mutual information—a UV-finite measure of entanglement between spatial subregions—and demonstrate that it exhibits sharp transitions as a function of time. These transitions separate regimes with qualitatively distinct patterns of entanglement propagation. I show that this phenomenon admits a natural bootstrap interpretation: the phase of the mutual information is determined by the conformal block that dominates in a given OPE channel. More broadly, these results suggest a framework in which Lorentzian dynamics can be analyzed using bootstrap techniques.