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arXiv · 1904.00668

Typicality and thermality in 2d CFT

Shouvik Datta·Per Kraus·Ben Michel
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Abstract

We identify typical high energy eigenstates in two-dimensional conformal field theories at finite $c$ and establish that correlation functions of the stress tensor in such states are accurately thermal as defined by the standard canonical ensemble. Typical states of dimension $h$ are shown to be typical level $h/c$ descendants. In the AdS$_3$/CFT$_2$ correspondence, it is such states that should be compared to black holes in the bulk. We also discuss the discrepancy between thermal correlators and those computed in high energy primary states: the latter are reproduced instead by a generalized Gibbs ensemble with extreme values chosen for the chemical potentials conjugate to the KdV charges.

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Shouvik Datta, Per Kraus, Ben Michel. 2019-04-01. Typicality and thermality in 2d CFT. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep07(2019)143

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