Hawking from Catalan

The Virasoro algebra determines all `graviton' matrix elements in AdS$_3$/CFT$_2$. We study the explicit exchange of any number of Virasoro gravitons between heavy and light CFT$_2$ operators at large central charge. These graviton exchanges can be written in terms of new on-shell tree diagrams, organized in a perturbative expansion in $h_H/c$, the heavy operator dimension divided by the central charge. The Virasoro vacuum conformal block, which is the sum of all the tree diagrams, obeys a differential recursion relation generalizing that of the Catalan numbers. We use this recursion relation to sum the on-shell diagrams to all orders, computing the Virasoro vacuum block. Extrapolating to large $h_H/c$ determines the Hawking temperature of a BTZ black hole in dual AdS$_3$ theories.Comment: 19+8 pages, 5 figure

Chaotic Field Theory - a Sketch

Spatio-temporally chaotic dynamics of a classical field can be described by means of an infinite hierarchy of its unstable spatio-temporally periodic solutions. The periodic orbit theory yields the global averages characterizing the chaotic dynamics, as well as the starting semiclassical approximation to the quantum theory. New methods for computing corrections to the semiclassical approximation are developed; in particular, a nonlinear field transformation yields the perturbative corrections in a form more compact than the Feynman diagram expansions.Comment: 22 pp, 24 figs, uses elsart.cl

Self-Consistent Approximations to Non-Equilibrium Many-Body Theory

Within the non-equilibrium Green's function technique on the real time contour, the Phi-functional method of Baym is reviewed and generalized to arbitrary non-equilibrium many-particle systems. The scheme may be closed at any desired order in the number of loops or vertices of the generating functional. It defines effective theories, which provide a closed set of coupled classical field and Dyson equations, which are self-consistent, conserving and thermodynamically consistent. The approach permits to include unstable particles and therefore unifies the description of resonances with all other particles, which obtain a mass width by collisions, decays or creation processes in dense matter. The inclusion of classical fields enables the treatment of soft modes and phase instabilities. The method can be taken as a starting point for adequate and consistent quantum improvements of the in-medium rates in transport theories.Comment: 31 pages, Latex elsart-styl

Expansion of the effective action around non-Gaussian theories

This paper derives the Feynman rules for the diagrammatic perturbation expansion of the effective action around an arbitrary solvable problem. The perturbation expansion around a Gaussian theory is well known and composed of one-line irreducible diagrams only. For the expansions around an arbitrary, non-Gaussian problem, we show that a more general class of irreducible diagrams remains in addition to a second set of diagrams that has no analogue in the Gaussian case. The effective action is central to field theory, in particular to the study of phase transitions, symmetry breaking, effective equations of motion, and renormalization. We exemplify the method on the Ising model, where the effective action amounts to the Gibbs free energy, recovering the Thouless-Anderson-Palmer mean-field theory in a fully diagrammatic derivation. Higher order corrections follow with only minimal effort compared to existing techniques. Our results show further that the Plefka expansion and the high-temperature expansion are special cases of the general formalism presented here.Comment: 37 pages, published versio

Loschmidt Echo and Lyapunov Exponent in a Quantum Disordered System

We investigate the sensitivity of a disordered system with diffractive scatterers to a weak external perturbation. Specifically, we calculate the fidelity M(t) (also called the Loschmidt echo) characterizing a return probability after a propagation for a time $t$ followed by a backward propagation governed by a slightly perturbed Hamiltonian. For short-range scatterers we perform a diagrammatic calculation showing that the fidelity decays first exponentially according to the golden rule, and then follows a power law governed by the diffusive dynamics. For long-range disorder (when the diffractive scattering is of small-angle character) an intermediate regime emerges where the diagrammatics is not applicable. Using the path integral technique, we derive a kinetic equation and show that M(t) decays exponentially with a rate governed by the classical Lyapunov exponent.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Semiclassical Approach to Orbital Magnetism of Interacting Diffusive Quantum Systems

We study interaction effects on the orbital magnetism of diffusive mesoscopic quantum systems. By combining many-body perturbation theory with semiclassical techniques, we show that the interaction contribution to the ensemble averaged quantum thermodynamic potential can be reduced to an essentially classical operator. We compute the magnetic response of disordered rings and dots for diffusive classical dynamics. Our semiclassical approach reproduces the results of previous diagrammatic quantum calculations.Comment: 8 pages, revtex, includes 1 postscript fi

A Renormalization-Group approach to the Coulomb Gap

The free energy of the Coulomb Gap problem is expanded as a set of Feynman diagrams, using the standard diagrammatic methods of perturbation theory. The gap in the one-particle density of states due to long-ranged interactions corresponds to a renormalization of the two-point vertex function. By collecting the leading order logarithmic corrections we have derived the standard result for the density of states in the critical dimension, d=1. This method, which is shown to be identical to the approach of Thouless, Anderson and Palmer to spin glasses, allows us to derive the strong-disorder behaviour of the density of states. The use of the renormalization group allows this derivation to be extended to all disorders, and the use of an epsilon-expansion allows the method to be extended to d=2 and d=3. We speculate that the renormalization group equations can also be derived diagrammatically, allowing a simple derivation of the crossover behaviour observed in the case of weak disorder.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX. Diagrams available on request from [email protected]. Changes to figure 4 and second half of section