On the late-time behavior of Virasoro blocks and a classification of semiclassical saddles

A bstract Recent work has demonstrated that black hole thermodynamics and information loss/restoration in AdS 3 /CFT 2 can be derived almost entirely from the behavior of the Virasoro conformal blocks at large central charge, with relatively little dependence on the precise details of the CFT spectr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of high energy physics Vol. 2017; no. 4; pp. 1 - 47
Main Authors Fitzpatrick, A. Liam, Kaplan, Jared
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.04.2017
Springer Nature B.V
Springer Berlin
SpringerOpen
Subjects
AdS-CFT Correspondence
Black Holes
Classical and Quantum Gravitation
Classification
Conformal and W Symmetry
Conformal Field Theory
Decay
Decay rate
Elementary Particles
High energy physics
Mathematical analysis
Operators
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
Quantum Field Theories
Quantum Field Theory
Quantum Physics
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Relativity Theory
Restoration
Saddles
String Theory
Thermodynamics
AdS-CFT Correspondence
Conformal and W Symmetry
Black Holes
Conformal Field Theory
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Summary:A bstract Recent work has demonstrated that black hole thermodynamics and information loss/restoration in AdS 3 /CFT 2 can be derived almost entirely from the behavior of the Virasoro conformal blocks at large central charge, with relatively little dependence on the precise details of the CFT spectrum or OPE coefficients. Here, we elaborate on the non-perturbative behavior of Virasoro blocks by classifying all ‘saddles’ that can contribute for arbitrary values of external and internal operator dimensions in the semiclassical large central charge limit. The leading saddles, which determine the naive semiclassical behavior of the Virasoro blocks, all decay exponentially at late times, and at a rate that is independent of internal operator dimensions. Consequently, the semiclassical contribution of a finite number of high-energy states cannot resolve a well-known version of the information loss problem in AdS 3 . However, we identify two infinite classes of sub-leading saddles, and one of these classes does not decay at late times.
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USDOE Office of Science (SC)
SC0010025
ISSN:1029-8479
1029-8479
DOI:10.1007/JHEP04(2017)072