Conformal field theories with infinitely many conservation laws

Abstract: Globally conformal invariant quantum field theories in a D-dimensional space-time (D even) have rational correlation functions and admit an infinite number of conserved (symmetric traceless) tensor currents. In a theory of a scalar field of dimension D-2 they were demonstrated to be generated by bilocal normal products of free massless scalar fields with an O(N), U(N), or Sp(2N) (global) gauge symmetry [BNRT]. Recently, conformal field theories "with higher spin symmetry" were considered for D=3 in [MZ] where a similar result was obtained (exploiting earlier study of CFT correlators). We suggest that the proper generalization of the notion of a 2D chiral algebra to arbitrary (even or odd) dimension is precisely a CFT with an infinite series of conserved currents. We shall recast and complement (part of) the argument of Maldacena and Zhiboedov into the framework of our earlier work. We extend to D=4 the auxiliary Weyl-spinor formalism developed in [GPY] for D=3. The free field construction only follows for D>3 under additional assumptions about the operator product algebra. In particular, the problem of whether a rational CFT in 4D Minkowski space is necessarily trivial remains open.