A Conformal Collider for Holographic CFTs

Understand

We develop a formalism to study the implications of causality on OPE coefficients in conformal field theories with large central charge and a sparse spectrum of higher spin operators.

• The formalism has the interpretation of a new conformal collider-type experiment for these class of CFTs and hence it has the advantage of requiring knowledge only about CFT three-point functions.
• This is accomplished by considering the holographic null energy operator which was introduced in arXiv:1709.03597 as a generalization of the averaged null energy operator.
• Analyticity properties of correlators in the Regge limit imply that the holographic null energy operator is a positive operator in a subspace of the total CFT Hilbert space.