Dimensional CFT Research Articles

Entanglement entropy for TT deformed CFT in general dimensions

We consider deformation of a generic d dimensional (d≥2) large-N CFT on a sphere by a spin-0 operator which is bilinear in the components of the stress tensor. Such a deformation has been proposed to be holographically dual to an AdSd+1 bulk with a hard radial cut-off. We compute the exact partition function and find the entanglement entropy from the field theory side in various dimensions and compare with the corresponding holographic results. We also compute renormalized entanglement entropy both in field theory and holography and find complete agreement between them.

, , and string theory**Dedicated to the memory of P. G. O. Freund.

We calculate the spectrum of a two dimensional CFT on a cylinder, perturbed by a general linear combination of , and , by utilizing the relation of this problem to certain solvable single trace current-current deformations of the worldsheet theory of strings on . We show that this spectrum is real if and only if the dual bulk geometry has signature with no closed timelike curves. We also comment on the relations of string theory on and its deformations to symmetric product CFT’s, matrix string theory, and a black hole description of highly excited fundamental strings.

Entanglement versus entwinement in symmetric product orbifolds

We study the entanglement entropy of gauged internal degrees of freedom in a two dimensional symmetric product orbifold CFT, whose configurations consist of N strands sewn together into “long” strings, with wavefunctions symmetrized under permutations. In earlier work a related notion of “entwinement” was introduced. Here we treat this system analogously to a system of N identical particles. From an algebraic point of view, we point out that the reduced density matrix on k out of N particles is not associated with a subalgebra of operators, but rather with a linear subspace, which we explain is sufficient. In the orbifold CFT, we compute the entropy of a single strand in states holographically dual in the D1/D5 system to a conical defect geometry or a massless BTZ black hole and find a result identical to entwinement. We also calculate the entropy of two strands in the state that represents the conical defect; the result differs from entwinement. In this case, matching entwinement would require finding a gauge-invariant way to impose continuity across strands.

Scalar blocks as gravitational Wilson networks

In this paper we continue to develop further our prescription [arXiv:1602.02962] to holographically compute the conformal partial waves of CFT correlation functions using the gravitational open Wilson network operators in the bulk. In particular, we demonstrate how to implement it to compute four-point scalar partial waves in general dimension. In the process we introduce the concept of OPE modules, that helps us simplify the computations. Our result for scalar partial waves is naturally given in terms of the Gegenbauer polynomials. We also provide a simpler proof of a previously known recursion relation for the even dimensional CFT partial waves, which naturally leads us to an odd dimensional counterpart.

On the universality of late-time correlators in semi-classical 2d CFTs

In the framework of the AdS3/ CFT2 correspondence, we present a systematic analysis of the late time thermalization of a two dimensional CFT state created by insertion of small number of heavy operators on the vacuum. We show that at late Lorentzian time, the universal features of this thermalization are solely captured by the eigenvalues of the monodromy matrix corresponding to the solutions of the uniformization equation. We discuss two different ways to extract the monodromy eigenvalues while bypassing the need for finding explicitly the full monodromy matrix - first, using a monodromy preserving diffeomorphism and second using Chen-Simons formulation of gravity in AdS3. Both of the methods yield the same precise relation between the eigenvalues and the final black hole temperature at late Lorentzian time.

Towards entanglement of purification for conformal field theories

We argue that the entanglement of purification for two dimensional holographic CFT can be obtained from conformal blocks with internal twist operators. First, we explain our formula from the view point of tensor network model of holography. Then, we apply it to bipartite mixed states dual to subregion of AdS${}_3$ and the static BTZ blackhole geometries. The formula in CFT agrees with the entanglement wedge cross section in the bulk, which has been recently conjectured to be equivalent to the entanglement of purification.

Zooming in on AdS3/CFT2 near a BPS bound

Any (d + 1)-dimensional CFT with a U(1) flavor symmetry, a BPS bound and an exactly marginal coupling admits a decoupling limit in which one zooms in on the spectrum close to the bound. This limit is an Inönü-Wigner contraction of so(2, d+1)⊕u(1) that leads to a relativistic algebra with a scaling generator but no conformal generators. In 2D CFTs, Lorentz boosts are abelian and by adding a second u(1) we find a contraction of two copies of sl(2, ℝ) ⊕ u(1) to two copies of P2c, the 2-dimensional centrally extended Poincaré algebra. We show that the bulk is described by a novel non-Lorentzian geometry that we refer to as pseudo-Newton-Cartan geometry. Both the Chern-Simons action on sl(2, ℝ) ⊕ u(1) and the entire phase space of asymptotically AdS3 spacetimes are well-behaved in the corresponding limit if we fix the radial component for the u(1) connection. With this choice, the resulting Newton-Cartan foliation structure is now associated not with time, but with the emerging holographic direction. Since the leaves of this foliation do not mix, the emergence of the holographic direction is much simpler than in AdS3 holography. Furthermore, we show that the asymptotic symmetry algebra of the limit theory consists of a left- and a right-moving warped Virasoro algebra.

On a new type of divergence for spiky Wilson loops and related entanglement entropies

We study the divergences of Wilson loops for a contour with a cusp of zero opening angle, combined with a nonzero discontinuity of its curvature. The analysis is performed in lowest order, both for weak and strong coupling. Such a spike contributes a leading divergent term proportional to the inverse of the square root of the cutoff times the jump of the curvature. As nextleading term appears a logarithmic one in the supersymmetric case, but it is absent in QCD. The strong coupling result, obtained from minimal surfaces in AdS via holography, can be used also for applications to entanglement entropy in (2+1)-dimensional CFT's.

Entanglement entropy of singular surfaces under relevant deformations in holography

In the vacuum state of a CFT, the entanglement entropy of singular surfaces contains a logarithmic universal term which is only due to the singularity of the entangling surface. We consider the relevant perturbation of a three dimensional CFT for singular entangling surface. We observe that in addition to the universal term due to the entangling surface, there is a new logarithmic term which corresponds to a relevant perturbation of the conformal field theory with a coefficient depending on the scaling dimension of the relevant operator. We also find a new power law divergence in the holographic entanglement entropy. In addition, we study the effect of a relevant perturbation in the Gauss-Bonnet gravity for a singular entangling surface. Again a logarithmic term shows up. This new term is proportional to both the dimension of the relevant operator and the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. We also introduce the renormalized entanglement entropy for a kink region which in the UV limit reduces to a universal positive finite term.

Thermalization after holographic bilocal quench

We study thermalization in the holographic (1 + 1)-dimensional CFT after simultaneous generation of two high-energy excitations in the antipodal points on the circle. The holographic picture of such quantum quench is the creation of BTZ black hole from a collision of two massless particles. We perform holographic computation of entanglement entropy and mutual information in the boundary theory and analyze their evolution with time. We show that equilibration of the entanglement in the regions which contained one of the initial excitations is generally similar to that in other holographic quench models, but with some important distinctions. We observe that entanglement propagates along a sharp effective light cone from the points of initial excitations on the boundary. The characteristics of entanglement propagation in the global quench models such as entanglement velocity and the light cone velocity also have a meaning in the bilocal quench scenario. We also observe the loss of memory about the initial state during the equilibration process. We find that the memory loss reflects on the time behavior of the entanglement similarly to the global quench case, and it is related to the universal linear growth of entanglement, which comes from the interior of the forming black hole. We also analyze general two-point correlation functions in the framework of the geodesic approximation, focusing on the study of the late time behavior.

A cardy formula for three-point coefficients or how the black hole got its spots

Modular covariance of torus one-point functions constrains the three point function coefficients of a two dimensional CFT. This leads to an asymptotic formula for the average value of light-heavy-heavy three point coefficients, generalizing Cardy’s formula for the high energy density of states. The derivation uses certain asymptotic properties of one-point conformal blocks on the torus. Our asymptotic formula matches a dual AdS3 computation of one point functions in a black hole background. This is evidence that the BTZ black hole geometry emerges upon course-graining over a suitable family of heavy microstates.

Quantum revivals in free field CFT

The recent work by Cardy (arXiv:1603.08267) on quantum revivals and higher dimensional CFT is revisited and enlarged upon for free fields. The expressions for the free energy used here are those derived some time ago. The calculation is extended to spin–half fields for which the power spectrum involves the odd divisor function. An explanation of the rational revivals for odd spheres is given in terms of wrongly quantised fields and modular transformations. Comments are made on the equivalence of operator counting and eigenvalue methods, which is quickly verified.

Holographic confinement in inhomogeneous backgrounds

As noted by Witten, compactifying a $d$-dimensional holographic CFT on an $S^1$ gives a class of $(d-1)$-dimensional confining theories with gravity duals. The prototypical bulk solution dual to the ground state is a double Wick rotation of the AdS$_{d+1}$ Schwarzschild black hole known as the AdS soliton. We generalize such examples by allowing slow variations in the size of the $S^1$, and thus in the confinement scale. Coefficients governing the second order response of the system are computed for $3 \le d \le 8$ using a derivative expansion closely related to the fluid-gravity correspondence. The primary physical results are that i) gauge-theory flux tubes tend to align orthogonal to gradients and along the eigenvector of the Hessian with the lowest eigenvalue, ii) flux tubes aligned orthogonal to gradients are attracted to gradients for $d \le 6$ but repelled by gradients for $d \ge 7$, iii) flux tubes are repelled by regions where the second derivative along the tube is large and positive but are attracted to regions where the eigenvalues of the Hessian are large and positive in directions orthogonal to the tube, and iv) for $d > 3$, inhomogeneities act to raise the total energy of the confining vacuum above its zeroth order value.

Thermalization of Wightman functions in AdS/CFT and quasinormal modes

We study the time evolution of Wightman two-point functions of scalar fields in AdS$_3$-Vaidya, a spacetime undergoing gravitational collapse. In the boundary field theory, the collapse corresponds to a quench process where the dual 1+1 dimensional CFT is taken out of equilibrium and subsequently thermalizes. From the two-point function, we extract an effective occupation number in the boundary theory and study how it approaches the thermal Bose-Einstein distribution. We find that the Wightman functions, as well as the effective occupation numbers, thermalize with a rate set by the lowest quasinormal mode of the scalar field in the BTZ black hole background. We give a heuristic argument for the quasinormal decay, which is expected to apply to more general Vaidya spacetimes also in higher dimensions. This suggests a unified picture in which thermalization times of one- and two-point functions are determined by the lowest quasinormal mode. Finally, we study how these results compare to previous calculations of two-point functions based on the geodesic approximation.

On the monogamy of holographicn-partite information

We investigate the monogamy of holographic $n$-partite information for a system consisting of $n$ disjoint parallel strips with the same width and separation in AdS and AdS black brane geometries. More precisely, we study the sign of this quantity, \emph{e.g.} for $n=4, 5$, in various dimensions and for different parameters. Our results show that for quantum field theories with holographic duals, the holographic 4-partite information is always positive and the sign of holographic 5-partite information is found to be negative in the dual strongly coupled $1+1$ dimensional CFT. This latter result indicates that the holographic 4-partite information is monogamous. We also find the critical points corresponding to the possible phase transitions of these quantities.

Vacuum energy is non-positive for (2 + 1)-dimensional holographic CFTs

We consider a (2 + 1)-dimensional holographic CFT on a static spacetime with globally timelike Killing vector. Taking the spatial geometry to be closed but otherwise general we expect a non-trivial vacuum energy at zero temperature due to the Casimir effect. We assume a thermal state has an AdS/CFT dual description as a static smooth solution to gravity with a negative cosmological constant, which ends only on the conformal boundary or horizons. A bulk geometric argument then provides an upper bound on the ratio of CFT free energy to temperature. Considering the zero temperature limit of this bound implies the vacuum energy of the CFT is non-positive. Furthermore the vacuum energy must be negative unless the boundary metric is locally conformal to a product of time with a constant curvature space. We emphasise the argument does not require the zero temperature bulk geometry to be smooth, but only that singularities are ‘good’ so are hidden by horizons at finite temperature.

A holographic two-impurity Kondo model

We propose a model of a strongly-interacting two-impurity Kondo system based on the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, also known as holography. In a Landau Fermi Liquid, the single-impurity Kondo effect is the screening of an impurity spin at low temperature T . The two-impurity Kondo model then describes the competition between the Kondo interaction and the Heisenberg interaction between two impurity spins, also called the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction. For spin-1/2 impurities, that competition leads to a quantum phase transition from a Kondo-screened phase to a phase in which the two impurity spins screen one another. Our holographic model is based on a (1 + 1)-dimensional CFT description of the two-impurity Kondo model, reliable for two impurities with negligible separation in space. We consider only impurity spins in a totally anti-symmetric representation of an SU(N ) spin symmetry. We employ a large-N limit, in which both Kondo and RKKY couplings are double-trace, and both Kondo and inter-impurity screening appear as condensation of single-trace operators at the impurities’ location. We perform the holographic renormalization of our model, which allows us to identify the Kondo and RKKY couplings as boundary conditions on fields in AdS. We numerically compute the phase diagram of our model in the plane of RKKY coupling versus T , finding evidence for a quantum phase transition from a trivial phase, with neither Kondo nor inter-impurity screening, to a non-trivial phase, with both Kondo and anti-ferromagnetic inter-impurity screening. More generally we show, just using SU(N ) representation theory, that ferromagnetic correlations must be absent at leading order in the large-N limit. Our holographic model may be useful for studying many open problems involving strongly-interacting quantum impurities, including for example the Kondo lattice, relevant for describing the heavy fermion compounds.

Holographic mutual information in global Vaidya-BTZ spacetime

We investigate the evolution of the mutual information between two spatial subsystems in a compact 1+1 dimensional CFT after a quantum quench. To this end, we use the dual holographic process, given by the 2+1 dimensional Vaidya-BTZ spacetime in global coordinates, which describes the collapse of a spherically symmetric null shell. So, we first discuss the spacelike geodesic structure of this geometry and then we present the various behaviors of the holographic mutual information observed in this case. We also consider the analogous process in the adiabatic limit and compare these two cases from a geometrical point of view.

On KKLT/CFT and LVS/CFT dualities

We present a general discussion of the properties of three dimensional CFT duals to the AdS string theory vacua coming from type IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifi-cations. Both KKLT and Large Volume Scenario (LVS) minima are considered. In both cases we identify the large ‘central charge’, find a separation of scales between the radius of AdS and the size of the extra dimensions and show that the dual CFT has only a limited number of operators with small conformal dimension. Differences between the two sets of duals are identified. Besides a different amount of supersymmetry ( $$ \mathcal{N}=1 $$ for KKLT and $$ \mathcal{N}=0 $$ for LVS) we find that the LVS CFT dual has only one scalar operator with O(1) conformal dimension, corresponding to the volume modulus, whereas in KKLT the whole set of h1,1 Kahler moduli have this property. Also, the maximal number of degrees of freedom is estimated to be larger in LVS than in KKLT duals. In both cases we explic-itly compute the coefficient of the logarithmic contribution to the one-loop vacuum energy which should be invariant under duality and therefore provides a non-trivial prediction for the dual CFT. This coefficient takes a particularly simple form in the KKLT case.

Some results on the shape dependence of entanglement and Rényi entropies

We study how the universal contribution to entanglement entropy in a conformal field theory depends on the entangling region. We show that for a deformed sphere the variation of the universal contribution is quadratic in the deformation amplitude. We generalize these results for R\'enyi entropies. We obtain an explicit expression for the second order variation of entanglement entropy in the case of a deformed circle in a three dimensional CFT with a gravity dual. For the same system, we also consider an elliptic entangling region and determine numerically the entanglement entropy as a function of the aspect ratio of the ellipse. Based on these three-dimensional results and Solodukhin's formula in four dimensions, we conjecture that the sphere minimizes the universal contribution to entanglement entropy in all dimensions.