(Chiral) Virasoro invariance of the tree-level MHV graviton scattering amplitudes

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we continue our study of the tree level MHV graviton scattering amplitudes from the point of view of celestial holography. In arXiv:2008.04330 we showed that the celestial OPE of two gravitons in the MHV sector can be written as a linear combination of SL 2 ℂ ¯ $$ \overline{\mathrm{SL}\left(2,\mathbb{C}\right)} $$ current algebra and supertranslation descendants. In this note we show that the OPE is in fact manifestly invariant under the infinite dimensional Virasoro algebra as is expected for a 2-D CFT. This is consistent with the conjecture that the holographic dual in 4-D asymptotically flat space time is a 2-D CFT. Since we get only one copy of the Virasoro algebra we can conclude that the holographic dual theory which computes the MHV amplitudes is a chiral CFT with a host of other infinite dimensional global symmetries including SL 2 ℂ ¯ $$ \overline{\mathrm{SL}\left(2,\mathbb{C}\right)} $$ current algebra, supertranslations and subsubleading soft graviton symmetry. We also discuss some puzzles related to the appearance of the Virasoro symmetry.

Keywords

• Conformal and W Symmetry
• Scale and Conformal Symmetries
• Scattering Amplitudes