State-operator correspondence in celestial conformal field theory

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics Vol. 2021; no. 9; pp. 1 - 17
• Main Authors: Crawley, Erin, Miller, Noah, Narayanan, Sruthi A., Strominger, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.09.2021; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Nature; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Adjoints; Celestial sphere; Classical and Quantum Gravitation; CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; Conformal and W Symmetry; Conformal Field Theory; Elementary Particles; Field theory; High energy physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Regular Article - Theoretical Physics; Relativity Theory; Scattering Amplitudes; Star maps; String Theory; Scattering Amplitudes; Conformal Field Theory; Conformal and W Symmetry
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP09(2021)132

A bstract The bulk-to-boundary dictionary for 4D celestial holography is given a new entry defining 2D boundary states living on oriented circles on the celestial sphere. The states are constructed using the 2D CFT state-operator correspondence from operator insertions corresponding to either incoming or outgoing particles which cross the celestial sphere inside the circle. The BPZ construction is applied to give an inner product on such states whose associated bulk adjoints are shown to involve a shadow transform. Scattering amplitudes are then given by BPZ inner products between states living on the same circle but with opposite orientations. 2D boundary states are found to encode the same information as their 4D bulk counterparts, but organized in a radically different manner.