ELEMENTARY INTRODUCTION TO CONFORMAL-INVARIANCE

These notes constitute an elementary introduction to the concept of conformal invariance and its applications to the study of bidimensional critical phenomena. The aim is to give an access as pedestrian as possible to this vast subject. After a brief account of the general properties of conformal transformations in D dimensions, we study more specifically the case D = 2. The center of the discussion is then the consequences of the action of this symmetry group on bidimensional field theories, and in particular the links between the representations of the Virasoro algebra and the structure of the correlation functions of conformal field theories. Finally after showing how the Ising model reduces to a Majorana fermionic field theory, we see how the general formalism previously discussed can be applied to the Ising case at the critical point.