SLE-type growth processes and the Yang–Lee singularity

Abstract

The recently introduced SLE growth processes are based on conformal maps from an open and simply connected subset of the upper half-plane to the half-plane itself. We generalize this by considering a hierarchy of stochastic evolutions mapping open and simply connected subsets of smaller and smaller fractions of the upper half-plane to these fractions themselves. The evolutions are all driven by one-dimensional Brownian motion. Ordinary chordal SLE appears at grade one in the hierarchy. At grade two we find a direct correspondence to conformal field theory through the explicit construction of a level-four null vector in a highest-weight module of the Virasoro algebra. This conformal field theory has central charge c=−22/5 and is associated with the Yang–Lee singularity. Our construction may thus offer a novel description of this statistical model.