Fusion and positivity in chiral conformal field theory

James E. Tener

Published 2019-10-18Version 1

Conformal nets and vertex operator algebras are axiomatizations of two-dimensional chiral conformal field theories, both of which have had a significant impact on related mathematical areas of study. The two settings are expected to be equivalent under suitable hypotheses, but in practice such an equivalence has proven elusive, especially with regard to fusion products. This article develops a framework for the systematic comparison of fusion products between the contexts of VOAs and conformal nets. This framework is based on the geometric technique of 'bounded localized vertex operators,' which realizes algebras of observables via insertion operators localized in partially thin Riemann surfaces. We apply our framework to solve old problems about conformal nets and subfactors (e.g. rationality of conformal nets for WZW models and W-algebras of type ADE), obtain new results about VOAs (e.g. unitarity of representation categories), and give short proofs of many old results. We also consider a general class of positivity phenomena for VOAs, and use this to outline a program for identifying unitary tensor product theories of VOAs and conformal nets even for badly-behaved models.