Anomalies in the Space of Couplings and Dynamical Applications

Anomalies are invariants under renormalization group flow which lead to powerful constraints on the phases of quantum field theories. I will explain how these ideas can be generalized to families of theories labelled by coupling constants like the theta angle in gauge theory. Using these ideas we will be able to prove that certain systems, such as Yang-Mills theory in 4d, necessarily have a phase transition as these parameters are varied. We will also show how to use the same ideas to constrain the dynamics of defects where coupling constants vary in spacetime.