Regge's Inferno

TL;DR

This paper investigates large-spin operators in conformal field theories by analyzing their behavior on pp-wave backgrounds, revealing new symmetry constraints and a novel unitarity bound in four dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces the use of pp-wave backgrounds to study large-spin operators in CFTs, uncovering Heisenberg-group symmetries and deriving a new unitarity bound in 3+1 dimensions.

Findings

Heisenberg-group symmetries in pp-wave backgrounds constrain the spectrum.

Probing small-twist and large-twist regimes via these geometries.

Establishment of a new unitarity bound in 3+1 dimensional CFTs.

Abstract

We study large-spin operators in conformal field theories (CFTs) in spacetime dimensions $d>2$ by placing the theory on appropriate pp-wave backgrounds. We show that these geometries admit Heisenberg-group symmetries, and that these symmetries, combined with locality of quantum fields on such spacetimes, impose strong constraints on the asymptotic spectrum in the large-spin limit. The pp-wave backgrounds probe both the small-twist regime, corresponding to the Regge or light-cone bootstrap, and a strongly coupled regime of large twist. Finally, we demonstrate that causality (or the requirement that the energy be bounded from below) leads to a new unitarity bound in $3+1$ dimensions.