D1D5 CFT Research Articles

Mellin amplitudes for AdS3× S3

There are holographic superconformal theories in all dimensions between two and six which allow arbitrary tree-level four-point functions to be fixed by basic consistency conditions. Although Mellin space is usually the most efficient setting for imposing these contraints, four-point functions in two dimensions have thus far been an exception due to their more intricate dependence on the conformal cross-ratios. In this paper, we introduce a simple fix which exploits the relation between a parity-odd conformal block in two dimensions and a parity-even conformal block in four dimensions. We then apply the resulting toolkit to a study of the paradigmatic holographic theory in two dimensions which is the D1-D5 CFT. For correlators involving Kaluza-Klein modes of the tensor multiplet, this analysis reproduces results which were previously obtained using hidden conformal symmetry. With four Kaluza-Klein modes of the graviton multiplet, it yields new results including a compact formula for the correlators of all pairwise identical operators.

Vector superstrata. Part II

Microstate geometries are proposed microstates of black holes which can be described within supergravity. Even though their number may not reproduce the full entropy of black holes with finite-sized horizons, they still offer a glimpse into the microscopic structure of black holes. In this paper we construct a new set of microstate geometries of the supersymmetric D1-D5-P black hole, where the momentum charge is carried by a vector field, as seen from the perspective of six-dimensional supergravity. To aid our construction, we develop an algorithm which solves a complicated partial differential equation using the regularity of the geometries. The new solutions are asymptotically AdS3 × S3, and have a long, but finite AdS2 throat that caps off without ever developing a horizon. These microstate geometries have a holographic interpretation as coherent superpositions of heavy states in the boundary D1-D5 CFT. We identify the states which are dual to our newly constructed solutions and carry out some basic consistency checks to support our identification.

Bootstrapping the effect of the twist operator in the D1D5 CFT

In the D1D5 CFT the twist operator of order 2 can twist together two copies in the untwisted sector into a single joined copy in the twisted sector. Traditionally, this effect is computed by using the covering map method. Recently, a new method was developed using the Bogoliubov ansatz and conformal symmetry to compute this effect in a toy model of one free boson. In this paper, we use this method with superconformal symmetry to compute the effect of the twist operator in the D1D5 CFT. This may provide more effective tools for computing correlation functions of twist operators in this system.

Lifting of two-mode states in the D1-D5 CFT

We consider D1-D5-P states in the untwisted sector of the D1-D5 orbifold CFT where one copy of the seed CFT has been excited by a pair of oscillators, each being either bosonic or fermionic. While such states are BPS at the orbifold point, they will in general ‘lift’ as the theory is deformed towards general values of the couplings. We compute the expectation value of this lift at second order in the deformation parameter for the above mentioned states. We write this lift in terms of a fixed number of nested contour integrals on a given integrand; this integrand depends on the mode numbers of the oscillators in the state. We evaluate these integrals to obtain the explicit value of the lift for various subfamilies of states. At large mode numbers one observes a smooth increase of the lift with the dimension of the state h; this increase appears to follow a∼h\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \ extrm{a}\\sim \\sqrt{h} $$\\end{document} behavior similar to that found analytically in earlier computations for other classes of states.

Partial spectral flow in the D1D5 CFT

The two-dimensional \U0001d4a9 = 4 superconformal algebra has a free field realization with four bosons and four fermions. There is an automorphism of the algebra called spectral flow. Under spectral flow, the four fermions are transformed together. In this paper, we study partial spectral flow where only two of the four fermions are transformed. Partial spectral flow is applied to the D1D5 CFT where a marginal deformation moves the CFT away from the free point. The partial spectral flow is broken by the deformation. We show that this effect can be studied due to a transformation of the deformation which is well-defined under partial spectral flow. As a result in the spectrum, we demonstrate how to compute the second-order energy lift of a D1D5P state through its partial spectral flowed state. We find that D1D5P states related by partial spectral flow do not have the same lift in general.

Microstrata

Microstrata are the non-extremal analogues of superstrata: they are smooth, non-extremal (non-BPS) solitonic solutions to IIB supergravity whose deep-throat limits approximate black holes. Using perturbation theory and numerical methods, we construct families of solutions using a consistent truncation to three-dimensional supergravity. The most general families presented here involve two continuous parameters, or amplitudes, and four quantized parameters that set the angular momenta and energy levels. Our solutions are asymptotic to the vacuum of the D1-D5 system: AdS3 × S3 × \U0001d54b4. Using holography, we show that the they are dual to multi-particle states in the D1-D5 CFT involving a large number of mutually non-BPS supergravitons and we determine the anomalous dimensions of these states from the binding energies in supergravity. These binding energies are uniformly negative and depend non-linearly on the amplitudes of the states. In one family of solutions, smoothness restricts some of the fields to lie on a special locus of the parameter space. Using precision holography we show that this special locus can be identified with the multi-particle states constructed via the standard OPE of the single-particle constituents. Our numerical analysis shows that microstrata are robust at large amplitudes and the solutions can be obtained to very high precision.

The dual of a tidal force in the D1D5 CFT

It was demonstrated that a string probe falling radially within a superstratum geometry would experience tidal forces. These tidal forces were shown to excite the string by converting its kinetic energy into stringy excitations. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence we seek to understand this behavior from the perspective of the dual D1D5 CFT. To study this process we turn on an interaction of the theory which is described by a deformation operator. We start with an initial state which is dual to a graviton probe moving within the superstratum geometry. We then use two deformation operators to compute transition amplitudes between this state and a final state that corresponds to stringy excitations. We show that this amplitude grows as t2 with t being the amount of time for which the deformation operators are turned on. We argue that this process in the CFT is suggestive of the tidal effects experienced by the probe propagating within the dual superstratum geometry.

A freely falling graviton in the D1D5 CFT

We study a freely falling graviton propagating in AdS in the context of the D1D5 CFT, where we introduce an interaction by turning on a deformation operator. We start with one left and right moving boson in the CFT. After applying two deformation operators, the initial bosons split into three left moving and three right moving bosons. We compute the amplitude for various energies and extrapolate the result to the large energy region. At early times, the amplitude is linear in time. This corresponds to an infalling graviton becoming redshifted in AdS. At late times, the amplitude is periodic, which agrees with the fact that a freely falling graviton will not be thermalized.

Non-BPS bubbling geometries in AdS3

We construct large classes of non-BPS smooth horizonless geometries that are asymptotic to AdS3 × S3 × T4 in type IIB supergravity. These geometries are supported by electromagnetic flux corresponding to D1-D5 charges. We show that Einstein equations for systems with eight commuting Killing vectors decompose into a set of Ernst equations, thereby admitting an integrable structure. This feature, which can a priori be applied to other {textrm{AdS}}_Dtimes mathcal{C} settings in supergravity, allows us to use solution-generating techniques associated with the Ernst formalism. We explicitly derive solutions by applying the charged Weyl formalism that we have previously developed. These are sourced internally by a chain of bolts that correspond to regions where the orbits of the commuting Killing vectors collapse smoothly. We show that these geometries can be interpreted as non-BPS T4 and S3 deformations on global AdS3 × S3 × T4 that are located at the center of AdS3. These non-BPS deformations can be made arbitrarily small and should therefore correspond to non-supersymmetric operators in the D1-D5 CFT. Finally, we also construct interesting bound states of non-extremal BTZ black holes connected by regular bolts.

Dynamical evolution in the D1D5 CFT

It is interesting to ask: how does the radial space direction emerge from the CFT in gauge-gravity duality? In this context we resolve a long-standing puzzle with the gravity duals of two classes of states in the D1D5 CFT. For each class the CFT states are in the untwisted sector, suggesting that the energy gap should be 1/Ry where Ry is the radius of the circle on which the D1D5 CFT is compactified. For one class of states, the gravity dual indeed has exactly this gap, while for the other class, the gravity dual has a very deep throat, leading to an energy gap much smaller than 1/Ry. We resolve this puzzle by showing that for the latter class of states, perturbing the CFT off its free point leads to the formation of a band structure in the CFT. We also explain why such a band structure does not arise for the first class of states. Thus for the case where a deep throat emerges in the gravity description, the dynamics of falling down this throat is described in the CFT as a sequential ‘hopping’ between states all of which have the same energy at the free point; this hopping amplitude converts an integer spaced spectrum into a closely spaced band of energy levels.

Universal lifting in the D1-D5 CFT

We consider D1-D5-P states in the untwisted sector of the D1-D5 orbifold CFT where one copy of the seed CFT has been excited with a left-moving superconformal primary. Despite being BPS at the orbifold point, such states can ‘lift’ as the theory is deformed away from this point in moduli space. We compute this lifting at second order in the deformation parameter for arbitrary left-moving dimension h of this class of states. This result displays an interesting universality since the lifting does not depend on the details of the superconformal primary; it depends only on the dimension. In the large-dimension limit the lift scales as sqrt{h} ; it is observed that such scaling appears to be a universal property of the lift of D1-D5-P states.

Four-point functions with multi-cycle fields in symmetric orbifolds and the D1-D5 CFT

We study SN-invariant four-point functions with two generic multi-cycle fields and two twist-2 fields, at the free orbifold point of the D1-D5 CFT. We derive the explicit factorization of these functions following from the action of the symmetric group on the composite multi-cycle fields. Apart from non-trivial symmetry factors that we compute, the function with multi-cycle operators is reduced to a sum of connected correlators in which the composite fields have, at most, two cycles. The correlators with two double-cycle and two single-cycle fields give the leading order contribution in the large-N limit. We derive explicit formulas for these functions, encompassing a large class of choices for the single- and the double-cycle fields, including generic Ramond ground states, NS chiral fields and the marginal deformation operator. We are thus able to extract important dynamical information from the short-distance OPEs: conformal dimensions, R-charges and structure constants of families of BPS and non-BPS fields present in the corresponding light-light and heavy-light channels. We also discuss properties of generic multi-cycle Q-point functions in MN/SN orbifolds, using a technology due to Pakman, Rastelli and Razamat.

Hbox {AdS}_3 holography for non-BPS geometries

By using the approach introduced in Ganchev et al. (Q-Balls Meet Fuzzballs: Non-BPS Microstate Geometries. arXiv:2107.09677 [hep-th]) we construct non-BPS solutions of 6D (1, 0) supergravity coupled to two tensor multiplets as a perturbation of hbox {AdS}_3times S^3. These solutions are both regular and asymptotically hbox {AdS}_3times S^3, so according to the standard holographic framework they must have a dual CFT interpretation as non-supersymmetric heavy operators of the D1–D5 CFT. We provide quantitative evidence that such heavy CFT operators are bound states of a large number of light BPS operators that are mutually non-BPS.

Shockwaves in black hole microstate geometries

Gravitational solutions involving shockwaves have attracted significant recent interest in the context of black holes and quantum chaos. Certain classes of supersymmetric two-charge black hole microstates are described by supergravity solutions containing shockwaves, that are horizonless and smooth away from the shockwave. These configurations have been used to describe how black hole microstates absorb and scramble perturbations. In this paper we construct the first family of asymptotically flat supersymmetric three-charge microstate solutions that contain shockwaves. We identify a family of holographically dual states of the D1-D5 CFT and show that these pass a set of tests, including a precision holographic test. We find precise agreement between gravity and CFT. Our results may prove useful for constructing more general families of black hole microstate solutions.

Q-balls meet fuzzballs: non-BPS microstate geometries

We construct a three-parameter family of non-extremal microstate geometries, or “microstrata”, that are dual to states and deformations of the D1-D5 CFT. These families are non-extremal analogues of superstrata. We find these microstrata by using a Q-ball-inspired Ansatz that reduces the equations of motion to solving for eleven functions of one variable. We then solve this system both perturbatively and numerically and the results match extremely well. We find that the solutions have normal mode frequencies that depend upon the amplitudes of the excitations. We also show that, at higher order in perturbations, some of the solutions, having started with normalizable modes, develop a “non-normalizable” part, suggesting that the microstrata represent states in a perturbed form of the D1-D5 CFT. This paper is intended as a “Proof of Concept” for the Q-ball-inspired approach, and we will describe how it opens the way to many interesting follow-up calculations both in supergravity and in the dual holographic field theory.

On the dynamics of protected ramond ground states in the D1-D5 CFT

We examine the behavior of the Ramond ground states in the D1-D5 CFT after a deformation of the free-orbifold sigma model on target space ( {mathbbm{T}}^4 )N/SN by a marginal interaction operator. These states are compositions of Ramond ground states of the twisted and untwisted sectors. They are characterized by a conjugacy class of SN and by the set of their “spins”, including both R-charge and “internal” SU(2) charge. We compute the four-point functions of an arbitrary Ramond ground state with its conjugate and two interaction operators, for genus-zero covering surfaces representing the leading orders in the large-N expansion. We examine short distance limits of these four-point functions, shedding light on the dynamics of the interacting theory. We find the OPEs and a collection of structure constants of the ground states with the interaction operators and a set of resulting non-BPS twisted operators. We also calculate the integrals of the four-point functions over the positions of the interaction operators and show that they vanish. This provides an explicit demonstration that the Ramond ground states remain protected against deformations away of the free orbifold point, as expected from algebraic considerations using the spectral flow of the mathcal{N} = (4, 4) superconformal algebra with central charge c = 6N.

Lifting at higher levels in the D1D5 CFT

The D1D5P system has a large set of BPS states at its orbifold point. Perturbing away from this ‘free’ point leads to some states joining up into long supermultiplets and lifting, while other states remain BPS. We consider the simplest orbifold which exhibits this lift: that with N = 2 copies of the free c = 6 CFT. We write down the number of lifted and unlifted states implied by the index at all levels upto 6. We work to second order in the perturbation strength λ. For levels upto 4, we find the wavefunctions of the lifted states, their supermultiplet structure and the value of the lift. All states that are allowed to lift by the index are in fact lifted at order O(λ2). We observe that the unlifted states in the untwisted sector have an antisymmetry between the copies in the right moving Ramond ground state sector, and extend this observation to find classes of states for arbitrary N that will remain unlifted to O(λ2).

Thermalization in the D1D5 CFT

It is generally agreed that black hole formation in gravity corresponds to thermalization in the dual CFT. It is sometimes argued that if the CFT evolution shows evidence of large redshift in gravity, then we have seen black hole formation in the CFT. We argue that this is not the case: a clock falling towards the horizon increases its redshift but remains intact as a clock; thus it is not ‘thermalized’. Instead, thermalization should correspond to a new phase after the phase of large redshift, where the infalling object turns into fuzzballs on reaching within planck distance of the horizon. We compute simple examples of the scattering vertex in the D1D5 CFT which, after many iterations, would lead to thermalization. An initial state made of two left-moving and two right-moving excitations corresponds, in gravity, to two gravitons heading towards each other. The thermalization vertex in the CFT breaks these excitations into multiple excitations on the left and right sides; we compute the amplitudes for several of these processes. We find secular terms that grow as t2 instead of oscillating with t; we conjecture that this may be a feature of processes leading to thermalization.

BTZ trailing strings

We compute holographically the energy loss of a moving quark in various states of the D1-D5 CFT. In the dual bulk geometries, the quark is the end of a trailing string, and the profile of this string determines the drag force exerted by the medium on the quark. We find no drag force when the CFT state has no momentum, and a nontrivial force for any value of the velocity (even at rest) when the string extends in the supersymmetric D1-D5-P black-hole geometry, or a horizonless microstate geometry thereof. As the length of the throat of the microstate geometry increases, the drag force approaches the thermal BTZ expression, confirming the ability of these microstate geometries to capture typical black-hole physics. We also find that when the D1-D5-P black hole is non-extremal, there is a special value of the velocity at which a moving quark feels no force. We compute this velocity holographically and we compare it to the velocity computed in the CFT.

Lifting of level-1 states in the D1D5 CFT

The D1D5 CFT has a large set of states that are supersymmetric at the ‘free’ orbifold point in moduli space. When we perturb away from this point, some of these states join into long multiplets and lift in energy, while others remain supersymmetric. The count of unlifted states can be bounded below by an index, but the index does not yield the pattern of lifting; i.e., which states join into a long multiplet and how much this multiplet lifts. In this paper we consider the simple case of the D1D5 CFT where the orbifold CFT is a sigma model with targets space (T4)2/S2 and consider states at energy level 1. There are 2688 states at this level. The lifted states form a triplet of long multiplets, and we compute their lift at second order in perturbation theory. Half the members of the long multiplet are in the untwisted sector and half are in the twisted sector. This and other similar studies should help in the understanding of fuzzball states that describe extremal holes, since CFT sectors with low twist describe shallow throats in the dual gravity solution while sectors with high twist describe deep throats.