Boundary correlators in WZW model on AdS2

Abstract

Boundary correlators of elementary fields in some 2d conformal field theories defined on AdS2 have a particularly simple structure. For example, the correlators of the Liouville scalar happen to be the same as the correlators of the chiral component of the stress tensor on a plane restricted to the real line. Here we show that an analogous relation is true also in the WZW model: boundary correlators of the WZW scalars have the same structure as the correlators of chiral Kac-Moody currents. This is checked at the level of the tree and one-loop Witten diagrams in AdS2. We also compute some tree-level correlators in a generic σ-model defined on AdS2 and show that they simplify only in the WZW case where an extra Kac-Moody symmetry appears. In particular, the terms in 4- point correlators having logarithmic dependence on 1d cross-ratio cancel only at the WZW point. One motivation behind this work is to learn how to compute AdS2 loop corrections in 2d models with derivative interactions related to the study of correlators of operators on Wilson loops in string theory in AdS.