Speaker: Ana-Maria Raclariu
Date: October 4, 2021
Affiliation: Perimeter Institute
Title: Progress in Celestial Holography
Abstract: Celestial amplitudes describe scattering in a basis of boost eigenstates. In this basis, 4-point massless scattering observables are functions of two variables: the sum over the boost weights $\beta$ which is dual to the center of mass energy, and a cross ratio $z$ related to the bulk scattering angle. In this talk I will describe two aspects of the physics captured by the $\beta$ and $z$ dependence. I will first show that the UV behavior of 4-point scattering is encoded in the analytic structure of celestial amplitudes in the complex $\beta$ plane. The residues of the poles at negative even integer $\beta$ are related to coefficients of higher-dimension operators in the low-energy effective action, hence subject to positivity constraints, while poles at positive even integer $\beta$ arise from UV asymptotics. I will then show that the $z$ dependence contains information about the celestial spectrum and three-point couplings. For massless scalar 4-point scattering mediated by massive exchange, the conformal blocks include massive scalar states with positive integer conformal weights, as well as intermediate exchanges of spinning light-ray states.