Non-Equilibrium Conformal Field Theories with Impurities

Abstract: We present a construction of non-equilibrium steady states within conformal field theory. These states sustain energy flows between two quantum systems, initially prepared at different temperatures, whose dynamical properties are represented by two, possibly different, conformal field theories connected through an impurity. This construction relies on a real time formulation of conformal defect dynamics based on a field scattering picture parallelizing - but yet different from - the Euclidean formulation. We present the basic characteristics of this formulation and give an algebraic construction of the real time scattering maps that we illustrate in the case of SU(2)-based conformal field theories.