One- and two-dimensional higher-point conformal blocks as free-particle wavefunctions in $$ {\textrm{AdS}}_3^{\otimes m} $$

Abstract

Abstract We establish that all of the one- and two-dimensional global conformal blocks are, up to some choice of prefactor, free-particle wavefunctions in tensor products of AdS3 or limits thereof. Our first core observation is that the six-point comb-channel conformal blocks correspond to free-particle wavefunctions on an AdS3 constructed directly in cross-ratio space. This construction generalizes to blocks for a special class of diagrams, which are determined as free-particle wavefunctions in tensor products of AdS3. Conformal blocks for all the remaining topologies are obtained as limits of the free wavefunctions mentioned above. Our results show directly that the integrable models associated with all one- and two-dimensional conformal blocks can be seen as limits of free theory, and manifest a relation between AdS and CFT kinematics that lies outside of the standard AdS/CFT dictionary. We complete the discussion by providing explicit Feynman-like rules that can be used to work out blocks for all topologies, as well as a Mathematica notebook that allows simple computation of Casimir equations and series expansions for blocks, by requiring just an OPE diagram as input.