Holographic thermal correlators and quasinormal modes from semiclassical Virasoro blocks

TL;DR

This paper develops an exact analytic approach using semiclassical Virasoro blocks to compute holographic thermal correlators and quasinormal modes in asymptotically AdS_5 black hole backgrounds, revealing structural similarities with 2D CFTs.

Contribution

It introduces new universal exact formulas for holographic two-point functions and quasinormal mode quantization conditions using Virasoro blocks and Nekrasov partition functions.

Findings

Derived universal exact expressions for thermal correlators.

Obtained exact quantization conditions for quasinormal modes.

Numerical validation of quasinormal mode conditions.

Abstract

Motivated by its relevance for thermal correlators in strongly coupled holographic CFTs, we refine and further develop a recent exact analytic approach to black hole perturbation problem, based on the semiclassical Virasoro blocks, or equivalently via AGT relation, the Nekrasov partition functions in the Nekrasov-Shatashvili limit. Focusing on asymptotically $\text{AdS}_5$ black hole backgrounds, we derive new universal exact expressions for holographic thermal two-point functions, both for scalar operators and conserved currents. Relatedly, we also obtain exact quantization conditions of the associated quasinormal modes (QNMs). Our expressions for the holographic $\text{CFT}_4$ closely resemble the well-known results for 2d thermal CFTs on $\mathbb{R}^{1,1}$. This structural similarity stems from the locality of fusion transformation for Virasoro blocks. We provide numerical checks of our quantization conditions for QNMs. Additionally, we discuss the application of our results to understand specific physical properties of QNMs, including their near-extremal and asymptotic limits. The latter is related to a certain large-momentum regime of semiclassical Virasoro blocks dual to Seiberg-Witten prepotentials.