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Title: 4D scattering amplitudes and asymptotic symmetries from 2D CFT

Journal Article · · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Walter Burke Inst. for Theoretical Physics
  2. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Dept. of Physics

We reformulate the scattering amplitudes of 4D at space gauge theory and gravity in the language of a 2D CFT on the celestial sphere. The resulting CFT structure exhibits an OPE constructed from 4D collinear singularities, as well as infinite-dimensional Kac-Moody and Virasoro algebras encoding the asymptotic symmetries of 4D at space. We derive these results by recasting 4D dynamics in terms of a convenient foliation of flat space into 3D Euclidean AdS and Lorentzian dS geometries. Tree-level scattering amplitudes take the form of Witten diagrams for a continuum of (A)dS modes, which are in turn equivalent to CFT correlators via the (A)dS/CFT dictionary. The Ward identities for the 2D conserved currents are dual to 4D soft theorems, while the bulk-boundary propagators of massless (A)dS modes are superpositions of the leading and subleading Weinberg soft factors of gauge theory and gravity. In general, the massless (A)dS modes are 3D Chern-Simons gauge fields describing the soft, single helicity sectors of 4D gauge theory and gravity. Consistent with the topological nature of Chern-Simons theory, Aharonov-Bohm effects record the \tracks" of hard particles in the soft radiation, leading to a simple characterization of gauge and gravitational memories. Soft particle exchanges between hard processes define the Kac-Moody level and Virasoro central charge, which are thereby related to the 4D gauge coupling and gravitational strength in units of an infrared cutoff. Lastly, we discuss a toy model for black hole horizons via a restriction to the Rindler region.

Research Organization:
California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF)
Contributing Organization:
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0010255; PHY-1315155
OSTI ID:
1360787
Journal Information:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2017, Issue 1; ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 130 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (20)

Null infinity and unitary representation of the Poincare group journal January 2019
On asymptotic symmetries of 3d extended supergravities journal February 2019
A d-dimensional stress tensor for Minkd+2 gravity journal May 2018
Loop-corrected Virasoro symmetry of 4D quantum gravity journal August 2017
Soft charges and electric-magnetic duality journal August 2018
Subleading power factorization with radiative functions journal November 2019
Symmetries of free massless particles and soft theorems journal September 2019
Asymptotically flat spacetimes with BMS 3 symmetry journal September 2017
Celestial amplitudes and conformal soft theorems journal September 2019
Superrotation Charge and Supertranslation Hair on Black Holes text January 2016
Soft Factorization in QED from 2D Kac-Moody Symmetry text January 2017
The nuts and bolts of the BMS Bootstrap text January 2017
Asymptotically flat spacetimes with BMS$_3$ symmetry text January 2017
Bootstrapping the QCD soft anomalous dimension text January 2017
Asymptotic Dynamics in Perturbative Quantum Gravity and BMS Supertranslations text January 2017
A $d$-Dimensional Stress Tensor for Mink$_{d+2}$ Gravity text January 2017
Symmetries of free massless particles and soft theorems text January 2018
Soft Charges and Electric-Magnetic Duality text January 2018
Conformally Soft Photons and Gravitons text January 2018
Celestial Amplitudes: Conformal Partial Waves and Soft Limits text January 2019

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