skip to main content


Title: Comments on the holographic description of Narain theories
A bstract We discuss the holographic description of Narain U(1) c × U(1) c conformal field theories, and their potential similarity to conventional weakly coupled gravitational theories in the bulk, in the sense that the effective IR bulk description includes “U(1) gravity” amended with additional light degrees of freedom. Starting from this picture, we formulate the hypothesis that in the large central charge limit the density of states of any Narain theory is bounded by below by the density of states of U(1) gravity. This immediately implies that the maximal value of the spectral gap for primary fields is ∆ 1 = c /(2 πe ). To test the self-consistency of this proposal, we study its implications using chiral lattice CFTs and CFTs based on quantum stabilizer codes. First we notice that the conjecture yields a new bound on quantum stabilizer codes, which is compatible with previously known bounds in the literature. We proceed to discuss the variance of the density of states, which for consistency must be vanishingly small in the large- c limit. We consider ensembles of code and chiral theories and show that in both cases the density variance is exponentially small in the central charge.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2013812
NSF-PAR ID:
10348656
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of High Energy Physics
Volume:
2021
Issue:
10
ISSN:
1029-8479
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
    A bstract There is a rich connection between classical error-correcting codes, Euclidean lattices, and chiral conformal field theories. Here we show that quantum error-correcting codes, those of the stabilizer type, are related to Lorentzian lattices and non-chiral CFTs. More specifically, real self-dual stabilizer codes can be associated with even self-dual Lorentzian lattices, and thus define Narain CFTs. We dub the resulting theories code CFTs and study their properties. T-duality transformations of a code CFT, at the level of the underlying code, reduce to code equivalences. By means of such equivalences, any stabilizer code can be reduced to a graph code. We can therefore represent code CFTs by graphs. We study code CFTs with small central charge c = n ≤ 12, and find many interesting examples. Among them is a non-chiral E 8 theory, which is based on the root lattice of E 8 understood as an even self-dual Lorentzian lattice. By analyzing all graphs with n ≤ 8 nodes we find many pairs and triples of physically distinct isospectral theories. We also construct numerous modular invariant functions satisfying all the basic properties expected of the CFT partition function, yet which are not partition functions of any known CFTs. We consider the ensemble average over all code theories, calculate the corresponding partition function, and discuss its possible holographic interpretation. The paper is written in a self-contained manner, and includes an extensive pedagogical introduction and many explicit examples. 
    more » « less
  2. A bstract We construct a map between a class of codes over F 4 and a family of non-rational Narain CFTs. This construction is complementary to a recently introduced relation between quantum stabilizer codes and a class of rational Narain theories. From the modular bootstrap point of view we formulate a polynomial ansatz for the partition function which reduces modular invariance to a handful of algebraic easy-to-solve constraints. For certain small values of central charge our construction yields optimal theories, i.e. those with the largest value of the spectral gap. 
    more » « less
  3. A<sc>bstract</sc>

    Recently established connection between additive codes and Narain CFTs provides a new tool to construct theories with special properties and solve modular bootstrap constraints by reducing them to algebraic identities. We generalize previous constructions to include many new theories, in particular we show that all known optimal Narain theories, i.e. those maximizing the value of spectral gap, can be constructed from codes. For asymptotically large central chargecwe show there are code theories with the spectral gap growing linearly withc, with the coefficient saturating the conjectural upper bound. We therefore conjecture that optimal Narain theories for any value ofccan be obtained from codes.

     
    more » « less
  4. null (Ed.)
    A bstract We obtain an asymptotic formula for the average value of the operator product expansion coefficients of any unitary, compact two dimensional CFT with c > 1. This formula is valid when one or more of the operators has large dimension or — in the presence of a twist gap — has large spin. Our formula is universal in the sense that it depends only on the central charge and not on any other details of the theory. This result unifies all previous asymptotic formulas for CFT2 structure constants, including those derived from crossing symmetry of four point functions, modular covariance of torus correlation functions, and higher genus modular invariance. We determine this formula at finite central charge by deriving crossing kernels for higher genus crossing equations, which give analytic control over the structure constants even in the absence of exact knowledge of the conformal blocks. The higher genus modular kernels are obtained by sewing together the elementary kernels for four-point crossing and modular transforms of torus one-point functions. Our asymptotic formula is related to the DOZZ formula for the structure constants of Liouville theory, and makes precise the sense in which Liouville theory governs the universal dynamics of heavy operators in any CFT. The large central charge limit provides a link with 3D gravity, where the averaging over heavy states corresponds to a coarse-graining over black hole microstates in holographic theories. Our formula also provides an improved understanding of the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) in CFT 2 , and suggests that ETH can be generalized to other kinematic regimes in two dimensional CFTs. 
    more » « less
  5. The delocalization or scrambling of quantum information has emerged as a central ingredient in the understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. Recently, significant progress has been made analytically by modeling non-integrable systems as periodically driven systems, lacking a Hamiltonian picture, while honest Hamiltonian dynamics are frequently limited to small system sizes due to computational constraints. In this paper, we address this by investigating the role of conservation laws (including energy conservation) in the thermalization process from an information-theoretic perspective. For general non-integrable models, we use the equilibrium approximation to show that the maximal amount of information is scrambled (as measured by the tripartite mutual information of the time-evolution operator) at late times even when a system conserves energy. In contrast, we explicate how when a system has additional symmetries that lead to degeneracies in the spectrum, the amount of information scrambled must decrease. This general theory is exemplified in case studies of holographic conformal field theories (CFTs) and the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. Due to the large Virasoro symmetry in 1+1D CFTs, we argue that, in a sense, these holographic theories are not maximally chaotic, which is explicitly seen by the non-saturation of the second Rényi tripartite mutual information. The roles of particle-hole and U(1) symmetries in the SYK model are milder due to the degeneracies being only two-fold, which we confirm explicitly at both large- and small-N. We reinterpret the operator entanglement in terms of the growth of local operators, connecting our results with the information scrambling described by out-of-time-ordered correlators, identifying the mechanism for suppressed scrambling from the Heisenberg perspective. 
    more » « less