Generating functions and large-charge expansion of integrated correlators in $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

We recently proved that, when integrating out spacetime dependence with a certain measure, four-point correlators $\langle \mathcal{O}_2\mathcal{O}_2\mathcal{O}^{(i)}_p \mathcal{O}^{(j)}_p \rangle$ in $SU(N)$ $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills are governed by a universal Laplace-difference equation. Here $\mathcal{O}^{(i)}_p$ is a superconformal primary with charge $p$ and degeneracy $i$. These observables, called integrated correlators, are modular functions of coupling $\tau$. The Laplace-difference equation relates integrated correlators of different charges recursively. In this paper, we introduce generating functions for the integrated correlators that sum over the charge. By utilising the Laplace-difference equation, we determine the generating functions given initial data. We show that the transseries of the integrated correlators in the large-$p$ (large-charge) expansion consists of three parts: 1) is independent of $\tau$ as a power series in $1/p$, plus an additional $\log(p)$ term if $i=j$; 2) is a power series in $1/p$, with coefficients given by a sum of the non-holomorphic Eisenstein series; 3) is a sum of exponentially decayed modular functions in the large-$p$ limit, which can be viewed as a generalisation of the non-holomorphic Eisenstein series. When $i=j$, there is an additional modular function that is independent of $p$ and is determined by the integrated correlator with $p=2$. The Laplace-difference equation was obtained with a reorganisation of the operators that means the large-charge limit is taken in a particular way here. From the $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$-invariant results, we also determine the generalised 't Hooft genus expansion and associated large-$p$ non-perturbative corrections of the integrated correlators by introducing $\lambda = pg^2_{YM}$. The generating functions have subtle differences between even and odd $N$ with important consequences in resurgence.