Light non-vacuum BMS${}_3$ blocks at order $1/c_M$

Abstract

We derive a closed expression for the $1/c_M$ correction to highest-weight BMS${}_3$ blocks with four light external primaries of generic weights and non-vacuum exchange. With $c_L$ and all operator weights held fixed, we prove that the global sector and descendants containing exactly one non-global generator $L_{-n}$ or $M_{-n}$ with $n\ge 2$ suffice through this order. This truncation reduces the intrinsic calculation to global blocks and their derivatives, whose contributions we resum for nonzero exchanged boost weight ${\xi }_p$. For pairwise identical external operators, we independently reproduce the correction through the introduction of boundary gravitons in the normalized three-point functions in the shadow representation, while keeping the exchanged two-point function fixed. The analogous prescription also reproduces the known non-vacuum Virasoro correction at order $1/c$. For the same external configuration, a formal ultra-relativistic contraction of Virasoro blocks with one flipped chiral representation provides a further check: it yields the same correction, and we prove that contraction commutes with extraction of the $1/c_M$ coefficient at each fixed descendant level. The degenerate exchange with ${\xi }_p=0$ requires a separate quotient construction and is not obtained as a smooth limit of the generic block, which we discuss in the appendix.

arXiv comment29 pages + appendices