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. The proof is based on a probabilistic construction of the Virasoro algebra highest weight modules through spectral analysis of an associated self adjoint operator akin to harmonic analysis on non compact Lie groups but in an infinite dimensional setup.
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）
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.
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…
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…
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…
We explain how the axioms of Conformal Field Theory are used to make predictions about critical exponents of continuous phase transitions in three dimensions, via a procedure called the conformal bootstrap. The method assumes conformal invariance of correlation functions, and imposes some relations between correlation functions of different orders. Numerical analysis shows that these conditions are incompatible unless the critical exponents take particular values, or more precisely that they must belong to a small island in the parameter space.
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…
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）
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
