Published January 2021 | Version Submitted + Published
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Towards Feynman rules for conformal blocks

  • 1. ROR icon Pomona College
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We conjecture a simple set of "Feynman rules" for constructing n-point global conformal blocks in any channel in d spacetime dimensions, for external and exchanged scalar operators for arbitrary n and d. The vertex factors are given in terms of Lauricella hypergeometric functions of one, two or three variables, and the Feynman rules furnish an explicit power-series expansion in powers of cross-ratios. These rules are conjectured based on previously known results in the literature, which include four-, five- and six-point examples as well as the n-point comb channel blocks. We prove these rules for all previously known cases, as well as two new ones: the seven-point block in a new topology, and all even-point blocks in the "OPE channel." The proof relies on holographic methods, notably the Feynman rules for Mellin amplitudes of tree-level AdS diagrams in a scalar effective field theory, and is easily applicable to any particular choice of a conformal block beyond those considered in this paper.

Additional Information

© 2020 The Authors. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Article funded by SCOAP3. Received: July 22, 2020; Revised: October 24, 2020; Accepted: November 16, 2020; Published: January 4, 2021. The work of S. H. was partially supported by the SCS Summer Research Grant, by the Pomona RAISE Grant, and by Caltech's Visiting Undergraduate Research Program (VURP).

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Published - Hoback-Parikh2021_Article_TowardsFeynmanRulesForConforma.pdf

Submitted - 2006.14736.pdf

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Eprint ID
107366
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20210107-131434378

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Funding

Pomona College
Caltech

Dates

Created
2021-01-08
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Updated
2021-11-16
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