Understand
Conformal blocks are the fundamental, theory-independent building blocks in any CFT, so it is important to understand their holographic representation in the context of AdS/CFT.
- We describe how to systematically extract the holographic objects which compute higher-point global (scalar) conformal blocks in arbitrary spacetime dimensions, extending the result for the four-point block, known in the literature as a geodesic Witten diagram, to five- and six-point blocks.
- The main new tools which allow us to obtain such representations are various higher-point propagator identities, which can be interpreted as generalizations of the well-known flat space star-triangle identity, and which compute integrals over products of three bulk-to-bulk and/or bulk-to-boundary propagators in negatively curved spacetime.
- Using the holographic representation of the higher-point conformal blocks and higher-point propagator identities, we develop geodesic diagram techniques to obtain the explicit direct-channel conformal block decomposition of a broad class of higher-point AdS diagrams in a scalar effective bulk theory, with closed-form expressions for the decomposition coefficients.