Conformal Colliders Meet the LHC

Lightray operators have played an important role in numerous recent developments in conformal field theory. These operators, and their associated operator product expansion (OPE), also play a central role in collider experiments, where they govern the flow of energy at small angles. 

Taking advantage of recent experimental and theoretical progress in understanding the structure of jets at the LHC, a field referred to as jet substructure, I will show that one can directly measure the shape dependence and scaling properties of multipoint correlators of energy flow operators in LHC data. Remarkably, the exceptional quality of the data allows basic properties, such as the convexity of the twist-two anomalous dimensions governing the OPE, to be immediately seen by eye. This rich dataset provides an opportunity for an interesting interplay between recent developments in CFT and LHC phenomenology.

In the second part of the talk, I will describe progress in understanding the perturbative structure of multipoint correlators of energy flow operators, focusing on the case of the three-point correlator.  I will show that the three-point correlator takes a remarkably simple form in perturbation theory, admitting a representation in terms of dual Feynman integrals. This perturbative data also provides a playground for understanding the lightray OPE in a non-trivial context, leading to the observation of some interesting features, such as analyticity in the transverse spin of the lightray operators appearing in the OPE.