The thermodynamics of purely elastic scattering theories and conformal perturbation theory

We discuss the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz, and explain how it allows one to reduce the infinite-volume thermodynamics of a (1 + 1)-dimensional purely elastic scattering theory to the solution of a set of integral equations for the one-particle excitation energies. The free energy at zero chemical potential(s) and temperature T is related to the ground state energy E₀(R) of the theory on a cylinder of circumference R = 1/T. E₀(R) determines properties of the CFT describing the UV limit of the given massive theory. These include the central charge (which we investigated in earlier work), the scaling dimension d of the conformal field whose perturbation leads to the massive theory, the coefficients in the conformal perturbation theory (CPT) expansion of E₀(R) in powers of R^2−d, and the bulk term in the CPT calculation of the ground-state energy. We determine the bulk term analytically, and obtain numerically the first six coefficients in the expansion of E₀(R) for many purely elastic scattering theories, including the scaling limit of the T = T_c Ising model in a magnetic field. The perfect agreement with (more limited) direct CPT results provides further strong support for the identification of these theories as specific perturbed CFTs. We suggest that the singularities of E₀(R), the first of which is responsible for the finite radius of convergence of CPT, are square-root branch points and related to the zeros of the partition function of the corresponding lattice model.