English

A non-rational Verlinde formula from Virasoro TQFT

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-01-17 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We use the Virasoro TQFT to derive an integral identity that we view as a non-rational generalization of the Verlinde formula for the Virasoro algebra with central charge c25c\geq 25. The identity expresses the Virasoro fusion kernel as an integral over a ratio of modular S-kernels on the (punctured) torus. In particular, it shows that the one-point S-kernel diagonalizes the Virasoro 6j6j symbol. After carefully studying the analytic properties of this `Virasoro-Verlinde formula', we present three applications. In boundary Liouville CFT, the formula ensures the open-closed duality of the boundary one-point function on the annulus. In pure 3d gravity, it provides an essential step in computing the partition function on hyperbolic 3-manifolds that fiber over the circle. Lastly, in AdS3_3/CFT2_2, the formula computes a three-boundary torus wormhole, which leads to a prediction for the statistical correlation between the density of states and two OPE coefficients in the dual large-cc CFT ensemble. We conclude by discussing the implications of our result for the fusion rules in generic non-rational 2d CFTs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.07285,
  title  = {A non-rational Verlinde formula from Virasoro TQFT},
  author = {Boris Post and Ioannis Tsiares},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.07285},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

50 pages + 2 appendices. V2: 1 footnote added in section 3.1, references added