Full universal enveloping vertex algebras from factorisation
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 . Specifically, we construct a prefactorisation algebra on which locally encodes the full (non-chiral) version of a universal enveloping vertex algebra , where is a finite-dimensional vector space labelling the set of fields and is a -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 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 . We also give an explicit derivation of Borcherds type identities and a construction of the operator formalism for .
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