Energy Flux Positivity and Unitarity in Conformal Field Theories

Journal Article · Fri Jan 07 00:00:00 EST 2011 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.106.011601· OSTI ID:21532222

Kulaxizi, Manuela ^[1]; Parnachev, Andrei ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics, University of Amsterdam, Valckenierstraat 65, 1018XE Amsterdam (Netherlands)
2. C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3840 (United States)

We show that in most conformal field theories the condition of the energy flux positivity, proposed by Hofman and Maldacena, is equivalent to the absence of ghosts. At finite temperature and large energy and momenta, the two-point functions of the stress energy tensor develop light like poles. The residues of the poles can be computed, as long as the only spin-two conserved current, which appears in the stress energy tensor operator-product expansion and acquires a nonvanishing expectation value at finite temperature, is the stress energy tensor. The condition for the residues to stay positive and the theory to remain ghost-free is equivalent to the condition of positivity of energy flux.

• OSTI ID: 21532222
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.011601; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CONFORMAL INVARIANCE
CURRENTS
EXPECTATION VALUE
OPERATOR PRODUCT EXPANSION
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
SPIN
STRESSES
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
TENSORS
UNITARITY
ANGULAR MOMENTUM
FIELD THEORIES
INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES
PARTICLE PROPERTIES
SERIES EXPANSION