pith. machine review for the scientific record. sign in

Universal Spectrum of 2d Conformal Field Theory in the Large c Limit

3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

3 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Two-dimensional conformal field theories exhibit a universal free energy in the high temperature limit $T \to \infty$, and a universal spectrum in the Cardy regime, $\Delta \to \infty$. We show that a much stronger form of universality holds in theories with a large central charge $c$ and a sparse light spectrum. In these theories, the free energy is universal at all values of the temperature, and the microscopic spectrum matches the Cardy entropy for all $\Delta \geq c/6$. The same is true of three-dimensional quantum gravity; therefore our results provide simple necessary and sufficient criteria for 2d CFTs to behave holographically in terms of the leading spectrum and thermodynamics. We also discuss several applications to CFT and gravity, including operator dimension bounds derived from the modular bootstrap, universality in symmetric orbifolds, and the role of non-universal `enigma' saddlepoints in the thermodynamics of 3d gravity.

fields

hep-th 3

years

2026 3

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 3

representative citing papers

A solvable model of 3d quantum gravity

hep-th · 2026-05-12 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0

A solvable 3d quantum gravity model is defined by summing Virasoro TQFT copies over all topologies, shown to be dual to a 2d CFT ensemble and to exhibit semiclassical features such as cured negative density of states and Hawking-Page transition in the large-c limit.

Descending into the Modular Bootstrap

hep-th · 2026-04-01 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0

Machine-learning optimization produces candidate truncated modular-invariant partition functions for 2d CFTs in the central-charge window 1 to 8/7, indicating a continuous solution space and a stricter spectral-gap bound than the prior c/6 + 1/3 limit.

citing papers explorer

Showing 3 of 3 citing papers.

  • A solvable model of 3d quantum gravity hep-th · 2026-05-12 · unverdicted · none · ref 7 · internal anchor

    A solvable 3d quantum gravity model is defined by summing Virasoro TQFT copies over all topologies, shown to be dual to a 2d CFT ensemble and to exhibit semiclassical features such as cured negative density of states and Hawking-Page transition in the large-c limit.

  • Descending into the Modular Bootstrap hep-th · 2026-04-01 · unverdicted · none · ref 10

    Machine-learning optimization produces candidate truncated modular-invariant partition functions for 2d CFTs in the central-charge window 1 to 8/7, indicating a continuous solution space and a stricter spectral-gap bound than the prior c/6 + 1/3 limit.

  • Large-c BCFT Entanglement Entropy with Deformed Boundaries from Emergent JT Gravity hep-th · 2026-04-20 · unverdicted · none · ref 63

    At large central charge, BCFT von Neumann entropy with deformed boundaries is reproduced by island entropy in an emergent JT gravity setup with transparent boundary conditions set by the deformation.