AdS$_2$ Holographic Dictionary

TL;DR

This paper develops the holographic dictionary for 2D Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity, analyzing both running and constant dilaton solutions, and explores their dual CFT descriptions, symmetries, and higher-dimensional uplifts.

Contribution

It constructs the holographic dictionary for 2D dilaton gravity, computes renormalized correlators, and clarifies the role of the scalar operator in the dual theory, including symmetry structures and uplifts.

Findings

Scalar operator source induces matter conformal anomaly in running solutions

Constant dilaton solutions have only electric charge as a conserved charge

Uplifted solutions relate to known and new four-dimensional geometries

Abstract

We construct the holographic dictionary for both running and constant dilaton solutions of the 2D Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theory obtained by a circle reduction from 3D gravity with negative cosmological constant. This specific model ensures that the dual theory has a well defined ultraviolet completion in terms of a 2D CFT, but our results apply qualitatively to a wider class of 2D dilaton gravity theories. For each type of solutions we perform holographic renormalization, compute the exact renormalized one-point functions in the presence of arbitrary sources, and derive the asymptotic symmetries and conserved charges. In both cases we find that the scalar operator dual to the dilaton plays a crucial role in the description of the dynamics. Its source gives rise to a matter conformal anomaly for the running dilaton solutions, while its expectation value is the only non trivial observable for constant dilaton solutions. The role of this operator has been largely overlooked in the literature. We further show that the only non trivial conserved charges for running dilaton solutions are the mass and the electric charge, while for constant dilaton solutions only the electric charge is non zero. However, by uplifting the solutions to three dimensions we show that constant dilaton solutions can support non trivial extended symmetry algebras, including the one found by Comp\`ere, Song and Strominger, in agreement with results by Castro and Song. Finally, we demonstrate that any solution of this specific dilaton gravity model can be uplifted to a family of asymptotically AdS$_2\times S^2$ or conformally AdS$_2\times S^2$ solutions of the STU model in four dimensions. The four dimensional solutions obtained by uplifting the running dilaton solutions coincide with the so called `subtracted geometries', while those obtained from the uplift of the constant dilaton ones are new.