English

Toward Null State Equations in $d>2$

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-07-23 v3

Abstract

In two-dimensional CFTs with a large central charge, the level-two BPZ equation governs the heavy-light scalar four-point correlator when the light probe scalar has dimension h=12h= - {1\over 2}; the corresponding linear ordinary differential equation can be recast into a schematic form x2uxx+u=0x^2 u_{xx}+u=0. In this paper, we make an observation that in a class of four-dimensional CFTs with a large central charge, the heavy-light scalar correlator in the near-lightcone limit obeys a similar equation, x3uxxxy+u=0x^3 u_{xxxy}+u=0, when the light scalar has dimension Δ=1\Delta=-1. We focus on the multi-stress tensor sector of the theory and also discuss the corresponding equations for the cases with Δ=2,3\Delta = -2, -3. The solutions to these linear partial differential equations in higher dimensions are shown, after a suitable change of variables, to reproduce the near-lightcone correlators previously obtained via holography and the conformal bootstrap.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.03229,
  title  = {Toward Null State Equations in $d>2$},
  author = {Kuo-Wei Huang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.03229},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

27 pages, v2: minor corrections and references added, v3: notation improved

R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:49:21.668Z