We show that when one draws a simple conformal loop ensemble (CLE$_κ$ for $κ\in (8/3,4)$) on an independent $\sqrtκ$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surface and explores the CLE in a natural Markovian way, the quantum surfaces (e.g., corresponding to the interior of the CLE loops) that are cut out form a Poisson point process of quantum disks. This construction allows us to make direct links between CLE on LQG, asymmetric $(4/κ)$-stable processes, and labeled branching trees. The ratio between positive and negative jump intensities of these processes turns out to be $-\cos (4 π/ κ)$, which can be interpreted as a "density" of CLE loops in the CLE on LQG setting. Positive jumps correspond to the discovery of a CLE loop (where the LQG length of the loop is given by the jump size) and negative jumps correspond to the moments where the discovery process splits the remaining to be discovered domain into two pieces.
Some consequences are the following: (i) It provides a construction of a CLE on LQG as a patchwork/welding of quantum disks. (ii) It allows to construct the "natural quantum measure" that lives in a CLE carpet. (iii) It enables us to derive some new properties and formulas for SLE processes and CLE themselves (without LQG) such as the exact distribution of the trunk of the general asymmetric SLE$_κ(κ-6)$ processes.
The present work deals directly with structures in the continuum and makes no reference to discrete models, but our calculations match those for scaling limits of O(N) models on planar maps with large faces and CLE on LQG. Indeed, our Lévy-tree descriptions are exactly the ones that appear in the study of the large-scale limit of peeling of discrete decorated planar maps such as in recent work of Bertoin, Budd, Curien and Kortchemski.
The case of non-simple CLEs on LQG is the topic of another paper.
In this article we prove smoothness of the correlation functions in probabilistic Liouville Conformal Field Theory. Our result is a step towards proving that the correlation functions satisfy the higher Ward identities and the higher BPZ equations, predicted by the Conformal Bootstrap approach to Conformal Field Theory.
These lectures give an introduction to a probabilistic approach to Liouville Quantum Field Theory developed in a joint work with F. David, R. Rhodes and V. Vargas.
In this note, we give a unified rigorous construction for the Liouville conformal field theory on compact Riemann surface with boundaries for $γ\in (0,2]$ and prove a certain type of Markov property. We also prove some fusion-type estimates in the Boundary LCFT. This note will serve as a reference for a program leading to the conformal bootstrap for the Riemann surface with boundaries and several related projects.
Liouville Conformal Field Theory (LCFT) on the disk describes the conformal factor of the quantum disk, which is the natural random surface in Liouville quantum gravity with disk topology. Fateev, Zamolodchikov and Zamolodchikov (2000) proposed an explicit expression, the so-called the FZZ formula, for the one-point bulk structure constant for LCFT on the disk. In this paper we give a proof of the FZZ formula in the probabilistic framework of LCFT, which represents the first step towards rigorously solving boundary LCFT using conformal bootstrap. In contrast to previous works, our proof is bas…
We derive the conformal Ward identities for the correlation functions of the Stress--Energy tensor in probabilistic Liouville Conformal Field Theory on compact Riemann surfaces by varying the correlation functions with respect to the background metric. The conformal Ward identities show that the correlation functions of the Stress--Energy tensor can be expressed as a differential operator with meromorphic coefficient acting on the correlation functions of the primary fields of Liouville Conformal Field Theory. Variations of the metric come in three different forms: reparametrizations, conforma…
A rigorous probabilistic construction of Liouville conformal field theory (LCFT) on the Riemann sphere was recently given by David-Kupiainen and the last two authors. In this paper, we focus on the connection between LCFT and the classical Liouville field theory via the semiclassical approach. LCFT depends on a parameter $γ\in (0,2)$ and the limit $γ\to 0$ corresponds to the semiclassical limit of the theory. Within this asymptotic and under a negative curvature condition (on the limiting metric of the theory), we determine the limit of the correlation functions and of the associated Liouville…
Inspired by some intrinsic relations between Coulomb gas integrals and Gaussian multiplicative chaos, this article introduces a general mechanism to prove BPZ equations of order $(r,1)$ and $(1,r)$ in the setting of probabilistic Liouville conformal field theory, a family of conformal field theory which depends on a parameter $γ\in (0,2)$. The method consists in regrouping singularities on the degenerate insertion, and transforming the proof into an algebraic problem. With this method we show that BPZ equations hold on the sphere for the parameter $γ\in [\sqrt{2},2)$ in the case $(r,1)$ and fo…
We construct the stress-energy tensor correlation functions in probabilistic Liouville Conformal Field Theory (LCFT) on the two-dimensional sphere by studying the variation of the LCFT correlation functions with respect to a smooth Riemannian metric. In particular, we derive conformal Ward identities for these correlation functions. This forms the basis for the construction of a representation of the Virasoro algebra on the canonical Hilbert space of the LCFT. In \cite{ward} the conformal Ward identities were derived for one and two stress-energy tensor insertions using a different definition …
In a remarkable paper in 2008, Fyodorov and Bouchaud conjectured an exact formula for the density of the total mass of (sub-critical) Gaussian multiplicative chaos (GMC) associated to the Gaussian free field (GFF) on the unit circle. In this paper we will give a proof of this formula. In the mathematical literature this is the first occurrence of an explicit probability density for the total mass of a GMC measure. The key observation of our proof is that the negative moments of the total mass of GMC determine its law and are equal to one-point correlation functions of Liouville conformal field…
Consider two critical Liouville quantum gravity surfaces (i.e., $γ$-LQG for $γ=2$), each with the topology of $\mathbb{H}$ and with infinite boundary length. We prove that there a.s. exists a conformal welding of the two surfaces, when the boundaries are identified according to quantum boundary length. This results in a critical LQG surface decorated by an independent SLE$_4$. Combined with the proof of uniqueness for such a welding, recently established by McEnteggart, Miller, and Qian (2018), this shows that the welding operation is well-defined. Our result is a critical analogue of Sheffiel…
By applying an idea of Borodin and Olshanski [J. Algebra 313 (2007), 40-60], we study various scaling limits of determinantal point processes with trace class projection kernels given by spectral projections of selfadjoint Sturm-Liouville operators. Instead of studying the convergence of the kernels as functions, the method directly addresses the strong convergence of the induced integral operators. We show that, for this notion of convergence, the Dyson, Airy, and Bessel kernels are universal in the bulk, soft-edge, and hard-edge scaling limits. This result allows us to give a short and unifi…
Liouville Conformal Field Theory (LCFT) is an essential building block of Polyakov's formulation of non critical string theory. Moreover, scaling limits of statistical mechanics models on planar maps are believed by physicists to be described by LCFT. A rigorous probabilistic formulation of LCFT based on a path integral formulation was recently given by the present authors and F. David in \cite{DKRV}. In the present work, we prove the validity of the conformal Ward identities and the Belavin-Polyakov-Zamolodchikov (BPZ) differential equations (of order $2$) for the correlation functions of LCF…
We study a nonlinear stochastic heat equation forced by a space-time white noise on closed surfaces, with nonlinearity $e^{βu}$. This equation corresponds to the stochastic quantization of the Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) measure. (i) We first revisit the construction of the LQG measure in Liouville conformal field theory (LCFT) in the $L^2$ regime $0<β<\sqrt{2}$. This uniformizes in this regime the approaches of David-Kupiainen-Rhodes-Vargas (2016), David-Rhodes-Vargas (2016) and Guillarmou-Rhodes-Vargas (2019) which treated the case of a closed surface with genus 0, 1 and $> 1$ respective…
Irreducible Virasoro representations in Liouville conformal field theory
Aix–Marseille Université（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille（马赛数学研究所）；Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research (BICMR)（北京国际数学研究中心）
Previous works in this series have shown that an instance of a $\sqrt{8/3}$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) sphere has a well-defined distance function, and that the resulting metric measure space (mm-space) agrees in law with the Brownian map (TBM). In this work, we show that given just the mm-space structure, one can a.s. recover the LQG sphere. This implies that there is a canonical way to parameterize an instance of TBM by the Euclidean sphere (up to Möbius transformation). In other words, an instance of TBM has a canonical conformal structure. The conclusion is that TBM and the $\sqrt{8/3…
In this paper, we construct Liouville Quantum Field Theory (LQFT) on the toroidal topology in the spirit of the 1981 seminal work by Polyakov. Our approach follows the construction carried out by the authors together with A. Kupiainen in the case of the Riemann sphere. The difference is here that the moduli space for complex tori is non trivial. Modular properties of LQFT are thus investigated. This allows us to sum up the LQFT on complex tori over the moduli space, to compute the law of the random Liouville modulus, therefore recovering (and extending) formulae obtained by physicists, and mak…
The conformal bootstrap hypothesis is a powerful idea in theoretical physics which has led to spectacular predictions in the context of critical phenomena. It postulates an explicit expression for the correlation functions of a conformal field theory in terms of its 3-point correlation functions. In this paper we give the first mathematical proof of the conformal bootstrap hypothesis in the context of Liouville theory, a 2-dimensional conformal field theory studied since the eighties in theoretical physics and constructed recently by F. David and the three last authors using probability theory…
For $γ\in (0,2)$, $U\subset \mathbb C$, and an instance $h$ of the Gaussian free field (GFF) on $U$, the $γ$-Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surface associated with $(U,h)$ is formally described by the Riemannian metric tensor $e^{γh} (dx^2 + dy^2)$ on $U$. Previous work by the authors showed that one can define a canonical metric (distance function) $D_h$ on $U$ associated with a $γ$-LQG surface. We show that this metric is conformally covariant in the sense that it respects the coordinate change formula for $γ$-LQG surfaces. That is, if $U,\widetilde{U}$ are domains, $ϕ\colon U \to \widetild…
A first-order Liouville theorem is obtained for random ensembles of uniformly parabolic systems under the mere qualitative assumptions of stationarity and ergodicity. Furthermore, the paper establishes, almost surely, an intrinsic large-scale $C^{1,α}$-regularity estimate for caloric functions.
Dorn and Otto (1994) and independently Zamolodchikov and Zamolodchikov (1996) proposed a remarkable explicit expression, the so-called DOZZ formula, for the 3 point structure constants of Liouville Conformal Field Theory (LCFT), which is expected to describe the scaling limit of large planar maps properly embedded into the Riemann sphere. In this paper we give a proof of the DOZZ formula based on a rigorous probabilistic construction of LCFT in terms of Gaussian Multiplicative Chaos given earlier by F. David and the authors. This result is a fundamental step in the path to prove integrability …
Conformal Bootstrap for surfaces with boundary in Liouville CFT. Part II: spectral resolution and bootstrap
Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Laboratoire de mathématiques d’Orsay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille (I2M), and Institut Universitaire de France (IUF)（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）
We investigate the eigenvalues statistics of ensembles of normal random matrices when their order N tends to infinite. In the model the eigenvalues have uniform density within a region determined by a simple analytic polynomial curve. We study the conformal deformations of normal random ensembles to Hermitian random ensembles and give sufficient conditions for the latter to be a Wigner ensemble.
In this paper, we rigorously construct $2d$ Liouville Quantum Field Theory on the Riemann sphere introduced in the 1981 seminal work by Polyakov "Quantum Geometry of bosonic strings". We also establish some of its fundamental properties like conformal covariance under PSL$_2(\mathbb{C})$-action, Seiberg bounds, KPZ scaling laws, KPZ formula and the Weyl anomaly (Polyakov-Ray-Singer) formula for Liouville Quantum Gravity.
We construct a conformal welding of two Liouville quantum gravity random surfaces and show that the interface between them is a random fractal curve called the Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE), thereby resolving a variant of a conjecture of Peter Jones. We also demonstrate some surprising symmetries of this construction, which are consistent with the belief that (path decorated) random planar maps have (SLE-decorated) Liouville quantum gravity as a scaling limit. We present several precise conjectures and open questions.
We construct and study the conformal loop ensembles CLE(kappa), defined for all kappa between 8/3 and 8, using branching variants of SLE(kappa) called exploration trees. The conformal loop ensembles are random collections of countably many loops in a planar domain that are characterized by certain conformal invariance and Markov properties. We conjecture that they are the scaling limits of various random loop models from statistical physics, including the O(n) loop models.
Our purpose is to pursue the rigorous construction of Liouville Quantum Field Theory on Riemann surfaces initiated by F. David, A. Kupiainen and the last two authors in the context of the Riemann sphere and inspired by the 1981 seminal work by Polyakov. In this paper, we investigate the case of simply connected domains with boundary. We also make precise conjectures about the relationship of this theory to scaling limits of random planar maps with boundary conformally embedded onto the disk.
We give a simple set of geometric conditions on curves $η$, $\tildeη$ in ${\mathbf H}$ from $0$ to $\infty$ so that if $φ\colon {\mathbf H} \to {\mathbf H}$ is a homeomorphism which is conformal off $η$ with $φ(η) = \tildeη$ then $φ$ is a conformal automorphism of ${\mathbf H}$. Our motivation comes from the fact that it is possible to apply our result to random conformal welding problems related to the Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE) and Liouville quantum gravity (LQG). In particular, we show that if $η$ is a non-space-filling SLE$_κ$ curve in ${\mathbf H}$ from $0$ to $\infty$ and $φ$ is a h…
We conformally weld (via "quantum zipping") two boundary arcs of a Liouville quantum gravity random surface to generate a random curve called the Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE). We develop a theory of quantum fractal measures (consistent with the Knizhnik-Polyakov-Zamolochikov relation) and analyze their evolution under welding via SLE martingales. As an application, we construct the natural quantum length and boundary intersection measures on the SLE curve itself.
Virasoro Conformal Blocks and modular functor from Liouville CFT
Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research, Peking University（北京大学北京国际数学研究中心）；Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Laboratoire de mathématiques d’Orsay（巴黎萨克雷大学，法国国家科学研究中心，奥赛数学实验室）；University of Helsinki, Department of Mathematics and Statistics（赫尔辛基大学数学与统计系）；Aix-Marseille University, Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille (I2M), and Institut Universitaire de France (IUF)（艾克斯-马赛大学，马赛数学研究所（I2M），法国大学研究院（IUF））
In Liouville quantum gravity (or $2d$-Gaussian multiplicative chaos) one seeks to define a measure $μ^h = e^{γh(z)} dz$ where $h$ is an instance of the Gaussian free field on a planar domain $D$. Since $h$ is a distribution, not a function, one needs a regularization procedure to make this precise: for example, one may let $h_ε(z)$ be the average value of $h$ on the circle of radius $ε$ centered at $z$ (or an analogous average defined using a bump function supported inside that circle) and then write $μ^h = \lim_{ε\to 0} ε^{\frac{γ^2}{2}} e^{γh_ε(z)} dz$. If $ϕ: \tilde D \to D$ is a conformal …
