English

Free partition functions and an averaged holographic duality

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-02-04 v2

Abstract

We study the torus partition functions of free bosonic CFTs in two dimensions. Integrating over Narain moduli defines an ensemble-averaged free CFT. We calculate the averaged partition function and show that it can be reinterpreted as a sum over topologies in three dimensions. This result leads us to conjecture that an averaged free CFT in two dimensions is holographically dual to an exotic theory of three-dimensional gravity with U(1)c×U(1)cU(1)^c \times U(1)^c symmetry and a composite boundary graviton. Additionally, for small central charge cc, we obtain general constraints on the spectral gap of free CFTs using the spinning modular bootstrap, construct examples of Narain compactifications with a large gap, and find an analytic bootstrap functional corresponding to a single self-dual boson.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2006.04839,
  title  = {Free partition functions and an averaged holographic duality},
  author = {Nima Afkhami-Jeddi and Henry Cohn and Thomas Hartman and Amirhossein Tajdini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.04839},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

47 pages, 7 figures