A Monoidal Category for Perturbed Defects in Conformal Field Theory

Starting from an abelian rigid braided monoidal category C{mathcal{C}} we define an abelian rigid monoidal category C_F{mathcal{C}_F} which captures some aspects of perturbed conformal defects in two-dimensional conformal field theory. Namely, for V a rational vertex operator algebra we consider the charge-conjugation CFT constructed from V (the Cardy case). Then C = Rep(V){mathcal{C} = {rm Rep}(V)} and an object in C_F{mathcal{C}_F} corresponds to a conformal defect condition together with a direction of perturbation. We assign to each object in C_F{mathcal{C}_F} an operator on the space of states of the CFT, the perturbed defect operator, and show that the assignment factors through the Grothendieck ring of C_F{mathcal{C}_F}. This allows one to find functional relations between perturbed defect operators. Such relations are interesting because they contain information about the integrable structure of the CFT.