We study the Virasoro conformal block decomposition of the genus two partition function of a two-dimensional CFT by expanding around a Z3-invariant Riemann surface that is a three-fold cover of the Riemann sphere branched at four points, and explore constraints from genus two modular invariance and unitarity. In particular, we find critical surfaces that constrain the structure constants of a CFT beyond what is accessible via the crossing equation on the sphere.
We constrain the spectrum of two-dimensional unitary, compact conformal field theories with central charge c > 1 using modular bootstrap. Upper bounds on the gap in the dimension of primary operators of any spin, as well as in the dimension of scalar primaries, are computed numerically as functions of the central charge using semi-definite programming. Our bounds refine those of Hellerman and Friedan-Keller, and are in some cases saturated by known CFTs. In particular, we show that unitary CFTs with c < 8 must admit relevant deformations, and that a nontrivial bound on the gap of scalar primaries exists for c < 25. We also study bounds on the dimension gap in the presence of twist gaps, bounds on the degeneracy of operators, and demonstrate how extremal spectra which maximize the degeneracy at the gap can be determined numerically.
We explore the large spin spectrum in two-dimensional conformal field theories with a finite twist gap, using the modular bootstrap in the lightcone limit. By recursively solving the modular crossing equations associated to different $PSL(2,mathbb{Z})$ elements, we identify the universal contribution to the density of large spin states from the vacuum in the dual channel. Our result takes the form of a sum over $PSL(2,mathbb{Z})$ elements, whose leading term generalizes the usual Cardy formula to a wider regime. Rather curiously, the contribution to the density of states from the vacuum becomes negative in a specific limit, which can be canceled by that from a non-vacuum Virasoro primary whose twist is no bigger than $c-1over16$. This suggests a new upper bound of $c-1over 16$ on the twist gap in any $c>1$ compact, unitary conformal field theory with a vacuum, which would in particular imply that pure AdS$_3$ gravity does not exist. We confirm this negative density of states in the pure gravity partition function by Maloney, Witten, and Keller. We generalize our discussion to theories with $mathcal{N}=(1,1)$ supersymmetry, and find similar results.
Higher genus modular graph tensors map Feynman graphs to functions on the Torelli space of genus-$h$ compact Riemann surfaces which transform as tensors under the modular group $Sp(2h , mathbb Z)$, thereby generalizing a construction of Kawazumi. An infinite family of algebraic identities between one-loop and tree-level modular graph tensors are proven for arbitrary genus and arbitrary tensorial rank. We also derive a family of identities that apply to modular graph tensors of higher loop order.
We consider general fermionic quantum field theories with a global finite group symmetry $G$, focusing on the case of 2-dimensions and torus spacetime. The modular transformation properties of the family of partition functions with different backgrounds is determined by the t Hooft anomaly of $G$ and fermion parity. For a general possibly non-abelian $G$ we provide a method to determine the modular transformations directly from the bulk 3d invertible topological quantum field theory (iTQFT) corresponding to the anomaly by inflow. We also describe a method of evaluating the character map from the real representation ring of $G$ to the group which classifies anomalies. Physically the value of the map is given by the anomaly of free fermions in a given representation. We assume classification of the anomalies/iTQFTs by spin-cobordisms. As a byproduct, for all abelian symmetry groups $G$, we provide explicit combinatorial expressions for corresponding spin-bordism invariants in terms of surgery representation of arbitrary closed spin 3-manifolds. We work out the case of $G=mathbb{Z}_2$ in detail, and, as an application, we consider the constraints that t Hooft anomaly puts on the spectrum of the infrared conformal field theory.
We derive an asymptotic formula for operator product expansion coefficients of heavy operators in two dimensional conformal field theory. This follows from modular invariance of the genus two partition function, and generalises the asymptotic formula for the density of states from torus modular invariance. The resulting formula is universal, depending only on the central charge, but involves the asymptotic behaviour of genus two conformal blocks. We use monodromy techniques to compute the asymptotics of the relevant blocks at large central charge to determine the behaviour explicitly.