Semiclassical Virasoro blocks from AdS3 gravity
- Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Dept. of Physics
We present a unified framework for the holographic computation of Virasoro conformal blocks at large central charge. In particular, we provide bulk constructions that correctly reproduce all semiclassical Virasoro blocks that are known explicitly from conformal field theory computations. The results revolve around the use of geodesic Witten diagrams, recently introduced in [1], evaluated in locally AdS3 geometries generated by backreaction of heavy operators. We also provide an alternative computation of the heavy-light semiclassical block — in which two external operators become parametrically heavy — as a certain scattering process involving higher spin gauge fields in AdS3; this approach highlights the chiral nature of Virasoro blocks. Finally, these techniques may be systematically extended to compute corrections to these blocks and to interpolate amongst the different semiclassical regimes.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- Grant/Contract Number:
- FG02-91ER40671; PHY-1313986; PHY11-25915
- OSTI ID:
- 1437225
- Journal Information:
- Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2015, Issue 12; ISSN 1029-8479
- Publisher:
- Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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