Pith. sign in

REVIEW 5 cited by

CFT Unitarity and the AdS Cutkosky Rules

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2008.11730 v3 pith:BOLIR2CG submitted 2020-08-26 hep-th gr-qchep-ph

CFT Unitarity and the AdS Cutkosky Rules

classification hep-th gr-qchep-ph
keywords rulesdiagramscftscutkoskycutscuttingspacedouble-commutator
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

We derive the Cutkosky rules for conformal field theories (CFTs) at weak and strong coupling. These rules give a simple, diagrammatic method to compute the double-commutator that appears in the Lorentzian inversion formula. We first revisit weakly-coupled CFTs in flat space, where the cuts are performed on Feynman diagrams. We then generalize these rules to strongly-coupled holographic CFTs, where the cuts are performed on the Witten diagrams of the dual theory. In both cases, Cutkosky rules factorize loop diagrams into on-shell sub-diagrams and generalize the standard S-matrix cutting rules. These rules are naturally formulated and derived in Lorentzian momentum space, where the double-commutator is manifestly related to the CFT optical theorem. Finally, we study the AdS cutting rules in explicit examples at tree level and one loop. In these examples, we confirm that the rules are consistent with the OPE limit and that we recover the S-matrix optical theorem in the flat space limit. The AdS cutting rules and the CFT dispersion formula together form a holographic unitarity method to reconstruct Witten diagrams from their cuts.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Every Wrinkle Carries A Memory: An Integro-differential Bootstrap for Features in Cosmological Correlators

    hep-th 2025-10 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    Derives integro-differential boundary equations from bulk locality for scale-breaking cosmological correlators with oscillating heavy-field masses and solves them analytically and numerically to reveal enhanced collid...

  2. $20'$ Five-Point Function of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM and Stringy Corrections

    hep-th 2025-07 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    Bootstrap on Mellin amplitudes computes the first stringy correction to the five-point 20' correlator in N=4 SYM up to one undetermined coefficient, with flat-space limit checks and byproduct four-point results.

  3. The Conformal Grassmannian: A Symplectic Bi-Grassmannian for $CFT_ 4$ Correlators

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    A new symplectic bi-Grassmannian representation encodes CFT4 Wightman correlators via integrals over mutually symplectically orthogonal n-planes aligned with kinematics, reproducing known 2- and 3-point structures com...

  4. Composite AdS geodesics for CFT correlators and timelike entanglement entropy

    hep-th 2025-11 conditional novelty 6.0

    A bulk extremization prescription produces composite timelike-spacelike geodesics whose complex length exactly matches CFT two-point functions at timelike separation, including behind the BTZ horizon.

  5. Loops Outside a Black Hole

    hep-th 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0

    Conjecture reducing bulk loop discontinuity integrals in black hole Schwinger-Keldysh geometry to exterior real-time finite-temperature loop integrals, checked at one to three loops for low-point functions.