Physics Group Meeting

I will discuss kinematic space--the space of pairs of points in a CFT. Basic objects living in kinematic space are OPE blocks--contributions to the OPE from a single conformal family. In holographic theories, OPE blocks are dual at leading order in 1/N to integrals of effective bulk fields along geodesics or homogeneous minimal surfaces in AdS. To illustrate the usefulness of the kinematic language, I will sketch new, conceptually clean derivations of the following known results: (1) the form of the vacuum modular Hamiltonian, (2) the first law of entanglement in holography, (3) linearized Einstein's equations, (4) the HKLL form of local bulk operators, (5) geodesic Witten diagrams. If time permits, I will discuss some aspects of OPE blocks related to shadow representations of conformal symmetry.