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Title: A conformal collider for holographic CFTs

Journal Article · · Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [1]
  1. Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)
  2. Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States)
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We develop a formalism to study the implications of causality on OPE coefficients in conformal field theories with large central charge and a sparse spectrum of higher spin operators. The formalism has the interpretation of a new conformal collider-type experiment for these class of CFTs and hence it has the advantage of requiring knowledge only about CFT three-point functions. This is accomplished by considering the holographic null energy operator which was introduced in [1] as a generalization of the averaged null energy operator. Analyticity properties of correlators in the Regge limit imply that the holographic null energy operator is a positive operator in a subspace of the total CFT Hilbert space. Utilizing this positivity condition, we derive bounds on three-point functions $$\langle$$TO1O2$$\rangle$$of the stress tensor with various operators for CFTs with large central charge and a sparse spectrum. After imposing these constraints, we also find that the operator product expansions of all primary operators in the Regge limit have certain universal properties. All of these results are consistent with the expectation that CFTs in this class, irrespective of their microscopic details, admit universal gravity-like holographic dual descriptions. Furthermore, this connection enables us to constrain various inflationary observables such as the amplitude of chiral gravity waves, non-gaussanity of gravity waves and tensor-to-scalar ratio.

Research Organization:
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0014123
OSTI ID:
1612087
Journal Information:
Journal of High Energy Physics (Online), Vol. 2018, Issue 10; ISSN 1029-8479
Publisher:
Springer BerlinCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 40 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (8)

Measuring chiral gravitational waves in Chern-Simons gravity with CMB bispectra journal January 2019
A bound on massive higher spin particles journal April 2019
A Spin-2 Conjecture on the Swampland journal December 2018
Photon Masses in the Landscape and the Swampland text January 2018
A Spin-2 Conjecture on the Swampland text January 2018
Bootstrap and collider physics of parity violating conformal field theories in $d=3$ preprint January 2018
Conformal 3-Point Functions and the Lorentzian OPE in Momentum Space journal August 2020
Causality in curved spacetimes: The speed of light and gravity journal October 2020

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Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
Physics
AdS-CFT Correspondence
Conformal Field Theory
Models of Quantum Gravity