The Ubiquitous 'c': from the Stefan-Boltzmann Law to Quantum Information

Abstract

I discuss various aspects of the role of the conformal anomaly number c in 2- and 1+1-dimensional critical behaviour: its appearance as the analogue of Stefan's constant, its fundamental role in conformal field theory, in the classification of 2d universality classes, and as a measure of quantum entanglement, among other topics.

8 pages, 2 figures. Boltzmann Medal Lecture, Statphys24, Cairns 2010. v3: minor revisions

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