Time-periodicities in holographic CFTs

Abstract

Abstract Dynamics in AdS spacetimes is characterized by various time-periodicities. The most obvious of these is the time-periodic evolution of linearized fields, whose normal frequencies form integer-spaced ladders as a direct consequence of the structure of representations of the conformal group. There are also explicitly known time-periodic phenomena on much longer time scales inversely proportional to the coupling in the weakly nonlinear regime. We ask what would correspond to these long time periodicities in a holographic CFT, provided that such a CFT reproducing the AdS bulk dynamics in the large central charge limit has been found. The answer is a very large family of multiparticle operators whose conformal dimensions form simple ladders with spacing inversely proportional to the central charge. We give an explicit demonstration of these ideas in the context of a toy model holography involving a ϕ4 probe scalar field in AdS, but we expect the applicability of the underlying structure to be much more general.