The Kerr/CFT Correspondence

Quantum gravity in the region very near the horizon of an extreme Kerr black hole (whose angular momentum and mass are related by J=GM^2) is considered. It is shown that consistent boundary conditions exist, for which the asymptotic symmetry generators form one copy of the Virasoro algebra with central charge c_L=12J / \hbar. This implies that the near-horizon quantum states can be identified with those of (a chiral half of) a two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT). Moreover, in the extreme limit, the Frolov-Thorne vacuum state reduces to a thermal density matrix with dimensionless temperature T_L=1/2\pi and conjugate energy given by the zero mode generator, L_0, of the Virasoro algebra. Assuming unitarity, the Cardy formula then gives a microscopic entropy S_{micro}=2\pi J / \hbar for the CFT, which reproduces the macroscopic Bekenstein-Hawking entropy S_{macro}=Area / 4\hbar G. The results apply to any consistent unitary quantum theory of gravity with a Kerr solution. We accordingly conjecture that extreme Kerr black holes are holographically dual to a chiral two-dimensional conformal field theory with central charge c_L=12J / \hbar, and in particular that the near-extreme black hole GRS 1915+105 is approximately dual to a CFT with c_L \sim 2 \times 10^{79}.Comment: 21 pages, no figure

States, symmetries and correlators of TTˉT\bar{T} and JTˉ J\bar{T} symmetric orbifolds

We derive various properties of symmetric product orbifolds of $T\bar{T}$ and $J\bar{T}$ - deformed CFTs from a field-theoretical perspective. First, we generalise the known formula for the torus partition function of a symmetric orbifold theory in terms of the one of the seed to non-conformal two-dimensional QFTs; specialising this to seed $T\bar{T}$ and $J\bar{T}$ - deformed CFTs reproduces previous results in the literature. Second, we show that the single-trace $T\bar{T}$ and $J\bar{T}$ deformations preserve the Virasoro and Kac-Moody symmetries of the undeformed symmetric product orbifold CFT, including their fractional counterparts, as well as the KdV charges. Finally, we discuss correlation functions in these theories. By extending a previously-proposed basis of operators for $J\bar{T}$ - deformed CFTs to the single-trace case, we explicitly compute the correlation functions of both untwisted and twisted-sector operators and compare them to an appropriate set of holographic correlators. Our derivations are based mainly on Hilbert space techniques and completely avoid the use of conformal invariance, which is not present in these models.Comment: 50 pp, 5 figure

Classical and quantum symmetries of TTˉT\bar T-deformed CFTs

It has previously been proven that $T\bar T$ - deformed CFTs possess Virasoro $\times$ Virasoro symmetry at the full quantum level, whose generators are obtained by simply transporting the original CFT generators along the $T\bar T$ flow. In this article, we explicitly solve the corresponding flow equation in the classical limit, obtaining an infinite set of conserved charges whose action on phase space is well-defined even when the theory is on a compact space. The field-dependent coordinates that are characteristic of the $T\bar T$ deformation are shown to emerge unambiguously from the flow. Translating the symmetry transformations from the canonical to the covariant formalism, we find that they are different from those that have been previously proposed in the Lagrangian context, but that they agree precisely with those obtained from holography. We also comment on different possible bases for the symmetry generators and on how our explicit classical results could be extended perturbatively to the quantum level.Comment: 26 page