English

Holographic variables for CFT$_2$ conformal blocks with heavy operators

High Energy Physics - Theory 2020-05-20 v3

Abstract

We consider large-cc nn-point Virasoro blocks with nkn-k background heavy operators and kk perturbative heavy operators. Conformal dimensions of heavy operators scale linearly with large cc, while splitting into background/perturbative operators assumes an additional perturbative expansion. Such conformal blocks can be calculated within the monodromy method that basically reduces to solving auxiliary Fuchsian second-order equation and finding monodromy of solutions. We show that there exist particular variables that we call holographic, use of which drastically simplifies the whole analysis. In consequence, we formulate the uniformization property of the large-cc blocks which states that in the holographic variables their form depends only on the number of perturbative heavy operators. On the other hand, the holographic variables encode the metric in the bulk space so that the conformal blocks with the same number of perturbative operators are calculated by the same geodesic trees but on different geometries created by the background operators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.02604,
  title  = {Holographic variables for CFT$_2$ conformal blocks with heavy operators},
  author = {K. B. Alkalaev and Mikhail Pavlov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.02604},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

21 pages, v3: More comments and explanations, new Fig. 1, references added. Journal version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:06:07.252Z