Tomas Prochazka: Bethe ansatz in 2d conformal field theory

The usual approach used to study 2d CFT relies on the Virasoro algebra and its representation theory. Moving away from the criticality, this infinite dimensional symmetry is lost so it is useful to study aspects of 2d CFT which are more robust with respect to certain deformations. There is an infinite family of commuting higher spin Hamiltonians that one can construct out of Virasoro generators and perhaps surprisingly two different sets of Bethe ansatz equations that can be used to diagonalize these (one by Bazhanov-Lukyanov-Zamolodchikov and another by Litvinov, Nekrasov and Shatashvili). I want to discuss these constructions as well as their relation to W algebras and Yangian symmetry.