English

Full universal enveloping vertex algebras from factorisation

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-12-08 v3 Quantum Algebra

Abstract

We give a systematic construction of the symmetries, or observables in the vacuum sector, of a full conformal field theory on an arbitrary real two-dimensional conformal manifold Σ\Sigma. Specifically, we construct a prefactorisation algebra on Σ\Sigma which locally encodes the full (non-chiral) version Fa,α=Va,αVˉa,α\mathbb{F}^{\mathfrak{a},\alpha} = \mathbb{V}^{\mathfrak{a},\alpha} \otimes \bar{\mathbb{V}}^{\mathfrak{a},\alpha} of a universal enveloping vertex algebra Va,α\mathbb{V}^{\mathfrak a,\alpha}, where a\mathfrak a is a finite-dimensional vector space labelling the set of fields and α\alpha is a 22-cocycle controlling the central extension of their Lie brackets. Our construction provides a unified treatment of the three canonical examples of (full) universal enveloping vertex algebras - Kac-Moody, Virasoro and βγ\beta\gamma system - using the notion of unital local Lie algebra. By using the coordinate-invariant nature of prefactorisation algebras we derive an analogue of Huang's change of variable formula for full vertex algebras. We give a careful treatment of (both Euclidean and Lorentzian) reality conditions in this formalism which allows us, in the Kac-Moody and Virasoro cases, to construct a Hermitian sesquilinear form on these full vertex algebras by using the factorisation product to the global observables on S2S^2. We also give an explicit derivation of Borcherds type identities and a construction of the operator formalism for Fa,α\mathbb{F}^{\mathfrak a,\alpha}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.08412,
  title  = {Full universal enveloping vertex algebras from factorisation},
  author = {Benoit Vicedo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.08412},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

77 pages; v2: minor typos corrected and hyperlinks fixed; v3: substantially generalised setting and improved exposition, accepted for publication in Annales Henri Poincar\'e

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:06:30.074Z