English

S-duality in $T\bar{T}$-deformed CFT

High Energy Physics - Theory 2023-05-23 v3

Abstract

TTˉT\bar{T} deformed conformal field theories can be reformulated as worldsheet theories of non-critical strings. We use this correspondence to compute and study the TTˉT\bar{T} deformed partition sum of a symmetric product CFT. We find that it takes the form of a partition sum of a second quantized string theory with a worldsheet given by the product of the seed CFT and a gaussian sigma model with the two-torus as target space. We show that deformed symmetric product theory admits a natural UV completion that exhibits a strong weak coupling Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 duality that interchanges the momentum and winding numbers and maps the TTˉT\bar{T}-coupling λ\lambda to its inverse 1/λ1/\lambda. The Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 duality is part of a full O(2,2,Z)(2,2,\mathbb{Z})-duality group that includes a PSL(2,Z)(2,\mathbb{Z}) acting on the complexified TTˉT\bar{T} coupling. The duality symmetry eliminates the appearance of complex energies at strong coupling for all seed CFTs with central charge c6c\leq 6.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.09677,
  title  = {S-duality in $T\bar{T}$-deformed CFT},
  author = {Nathan Benjamin and Scott Collier and Jorrit Kruthoff and Herman Verlinde and Mengyang Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.09677},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

37 pages, v3: JHEP published version, comments, references added, typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:44:00.310Z