No Arabic abstract
We continue to develop the holographic interpretation of classical conformal blocks in terms of particles propagating in an asymptotically $AdS_3$ geometry. We study $n$-point block with two heavy and $n-2$ light fields. Using the worldline approach we propose and explicitly describe the corresponding bulk configuration, which consists of $n-3$ particles propagating in the conical defect background produced by the heavy fields. We test this general picture in the case of five points. Using the special combinatorial representation of the Virasoro conformal block we compute $5$-point classical block and find the exact correspondence with the bulk worldline action. In particular, the bulk analysis relies upon the special perturbative procedure which treats the $5$-point case as a deformation of the $4$-pt case.
Field theories in black hole spacetimes undergo dimensional reduction near horizon (in the Rindler limit) to two dimensional conformal field theories. We investigate this enhancement of symmetries in the context of gauge/gravity duality by considering Rindler space as boundary of Anti-de Sitter space in three spacetime dimensions. We show that the loxodromy conjugacy class of the SO(2,2) isometry group is responsible for generating the special conformal transformations on the boundary under RG flow. We use this approach to present an alternative derivation of the two-point function in Rindler space using AdS/CFT correspondence.
We give a simple iterative procedure to compute the classical conformal blocks on the sphere to all order in the modulus.
After deriving the classical Ward identity for the variation of the action under a change of the modulus of the torus we map the problem of the sphere with four sources to the torus. We extend the method previously developed for computing the classical conformal blocks for the sphere topology to the tours topology. We give the explicit results for the classical blocks up to the third order in the nome included and compare them with the classical limit of the quantum conformal blocks. The extension to higher orders is straightforward.
We study, using the dual AdS description, the vacua of field theories where some of the gauge symmetry is broken by expectation values of scalar fields. In such vacua, operators built out of the scalar fields acquire expectation values, and we show how to calculate them from the behavior of perturbations to the AdS background near the boundary. Specific examples include the ${cal N}=4$ SYM theory, and theories on D3 branes placed on orbifolds and conifolds. We also clarify some subtleties of the AdS/CFT correspondence that arise in this analysis. In particular, we explain how scalar fields in AdS space of sufficiently negative mass-squared can be associated with CFT operators of {it two} possible dimensions. All dimensions are bounded from below by $(d-2)/2$; this is the unitarity bound for scalar operators in $d$-dimensional field theory. We further argue that the generating functional for correlators in the theory with one choice of operator dimension is a Legendre transform of the generating functional in the theory with the other choice.
We consider duality between type 0B string theory on $AdS_5times S^5$ and the planar CFT on $N$ electric D3-branes coincident with $N$ magnetic D3-branes. It has been argued that this theory is stable up to a critical value of the `t Hooft coupling but is unstable beyond that point. We suggest that from the gauge theory point of view the development of instability is associated with singularity in the dimension of the operator corresponding to the tachyon field via the AdS/CFT map. Such singularities are common in large $N$ theories because summation over planar graphs typically has a finite radius of convergence. Hence we expect transitions between stability and instability for string theories in AdS backgrounds that are dual to certain large $N$ gauge theories: if there are tachyons for large AdS radius then they may be stabilized by reducing the radius below a critical value of order the string scale.