Tidal excitation as mixing in thermal CFT

TL;DR

This paper investigates how tidal excitation causes mixing of fields in thermal conformal field theories (CFTs) via holography, revealing enhanced effects at high temperatures and suggesting the presence of compact objects in the dual gravitational phase.

Contribution

It introduces mixed correlators as probes of gravitational effects in thermal CFTs and demonstrates the temperature-dependent behavior of tidal mixing in holographic duals.

Findings

Enhanced mixing at high temperatures near black holes

Large tidal conversion in low temperature phase of vector model

Strong gravitational effects concentrated at small boundary momenta

Abstract

We use mixed correlators in thermal CFT as clean probes of the strong gravity effects in their holographic duals. The dual interpretation of mixing is an inelastic conversion of one field to another field, induced by gravity: tidal excitation. We find an enhanced mixing at high temperatures, corresponding to large AdS black holes, concentrated to small boundary momenta, dual to the deep bulk, where strong gravitational fields are expected. We also find large $\mathcal{O}(1/G_{N})$ tidal conversion in the low temperature phase of the $U(N)$ vector model, strengthening suspicions that the bulk dual of this phase also houses extremely compact objects.