Conformal blocks in Virasoro and W theories: duality and the Calogero-Sutherland model

TL;DR

This paper explores the duality and properties of conformal blocks in Virasoro and W theories, revealing their connection to Calogero-Sutherland models and implications for quantum Hall states.

Contribution

It establishes a duality between degenerate fields in conformal blocks and links these to Calogero-Sutherland eigenstates, extending the understanding of conformal field theories and integrable models.

Findings

Conformal blocks obey second-order differential equations.

Excited states characterized by multiple partitions.

Connection between conformal blocks and fractional quantum Hall wave functions.

Abstract

We study the properties of the conformal blocks of the conformal field theories with Virasoro or W-extended symmetry. When the conformal blocks contain only second-order degenerate fields, the conformal blocks obey second order differential equations and they can be interpreted as ground-state wave functions of a trigonometric Calogero-Sutherland Hamiltonian with non-trivial braiding properties. A generalized duality property relates the two types of second order degenerate fields. By studying this duality we found that the excited states of the Calogero-Sutherland Hamiltonian are characterized by two partitions, or in the case of WA_{k-1} theories by k partitions. By extending the conformal field theories under consideration by a u(1) field, we find that we can put in correspondence the states in the Hilbert state of the extended CFT with the excited non-polynomial eigenstates of the Calogero-Sutherland Hamiltonian. When the action of the Calogero-Sutherland integrals of motion is translated on the Hilbert space, they become identical to the integrals of motion recently discovered by Alba, Fateev, Litvinov and Tarnopolsky in Liouville theory in the context of the AGT conjecture. Upon bosonisation, these integrals of motion can be expressed as a sum of two, or in general k, bosonic Calogero-Sutherland Hamiltonian coupled by an interaction term with a triangular structure. For special values of the coupling constant, the conformal blocks can be expressed in terms of Jack polynomials with pairing properties, and they give electron wave functions for special Fractional Quantum Hall states