Generalized monodromy method in gauge/gravity duality

Abstract

The method of monodromy is an important tool for computing Virasoro conformal blocks in a two-dimensional Conformal Field Theory (2d CFT) at large central charge and external dimensions. In deriving the form of the monodromy problem, which defines the method, one needs to insert a degenerate operator, usually a level-two operator, into the corresponding correlation function. It can be observed that the choice of which degenerate operator to insert is arbitrary, and they shall reveal the same physical principles underlying the method. In this paper, we exploit this freedom and generalize the method of monodromy by inserting higher-level degenerate operators. We illustrate the case with a level-three operator, and derive the corresponding form of the monodromy problem. We solve the monodromy problem perturbatively and numerically; and check that it agrees with the standard monodromy method, despite the fact that the two versions of the monodromy problem do not seem to be related in any obvious way. The forms corresponding to other higher-level degenerate operators are also discussed. We explain the physical origin of the coincidence and discuss its implication from a mathematical perspective.

References in corpus (7)

• Entanglement Entropy at Large Central Charge
• Holographic Entanglement Entropy from 2d CFT: Heavy States and Local Quenches
• Semi-classical Virasoro blocks: proof of exponentiation
• Many-point classical conformal blocks and geodesic networks on the hyperbolic plane
• Lifshitz Holography with Isotropic Scale Invariance
• Elliptic recurrence representation of the N=1 Neveu-Schwarz blocks
• Monodromy methods for torus conformal blocks and entanglement entropy at large central charge

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Example of the $4$-pt non-vacuum ${\mathcal{W}}_3$ classical block