Three-Dimensional Gravity Revisited

Understand

We consider the problem of identifying the CFT's that may be dual to pure gravity in three dimensions with negative cosmological constant.

• The c-theorem indicates that three-dimensional pure gravity is consistent only at certain values of the coupling constant, and the relation to Chern-Simons gauge theory hints that these may be the values at which the dual CFT can be holomorphically factorized.
• If so, and one takes at face value the minimum mass of a BTZ black hole, then the energy spectrum of three-dimensional gravity with negative cosmological constant can be determined exactly.
• At the most negative possible value of the cosmological constant, the dual CFT is very likely the monster theory of Frenkel, Lepowsky, and Meurman.