The conformal bootstrap aims to systematically constraint CFTs based on crossing symmetry and unitarity.
In this talk I will introduce a new approach to extract information from the crossing symmetry sum rules, based on the construction of linear functionals with certain positivity properties. I show these functionals allow us to derive optimal bounds on CFT data. Furthemore I will argue that special extremal solutions to crossing form a basis for the crossing equation, with the functionals living in the dual space. As an application we reconstruct physics of QFTs in AdS2 from the properties of 1d CFTs.
Slava Rychkov