Holography for chiral scale-invariant models

TL;DR

This paper explores holographic duals of chiral scale-invariant models deformed by null sources, focusing on geometries like AdS plane waves and their relation to Lifshitz theories via null circle reduction.

Contribution

It investigates holography for null-deformed conformal field theories, especially the z=0 case, linking Lifshitz theories to null circle reductions of anisotropic models.

Findings

AdS plane waves as duals to null-deformed CFTs

z=0 case related to Lifshitz theory via null reduction

Lifshitz theory arises from discrete light cone quantization

Abstract

Deformation of any d-dimensional conformal field theory by a constant null source for a vector operator of dimension (d + z -1) is exactly marginal with respect to anisotropic scale invariance, of dynamical exponent z. The holographic duals to such deformations are AdS plane waves, with z=2 being the Schrodinger geometry. In this paper we explore holography for such chiral scale-invariant models. The special case of z=0 can be realized with gravity coupled to a scalar, and is of particular interest since it is related to a Lifshitz theory with dynamical exponent two upon dimensional reduction. We show however that the corresponding reduction of the dual field theory is along a null circle, and thus the Lifshitz theory arises upon discrete light cone quantization of an anisotropic scale invariant field theory.