We develop a diagrammatic language for symmetric product orbifolds of two-dimensional conformal field theories. Correlation functions of twist operators are written as sums of diagrams: each diagram corresponds to a branched covering map from a surface where the fields are single-valued to the base sphere where twist operators are inserted. This diagrammatic language facilitates the study of the large N limit and makes more transparent the analogy between symmetric product orbifolds and free non-abelian gauge theories. We give a general algorithm to calculate the leading large N contribution to four-point correlators of twist fields.

We present a Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm to sample from multivariate Gaussian distributions in which the target space is constrained by linear and quadratic inequalities or products thereof. The Hamiltonian equations of motion can be integrated exactly and there are no parameters to tune. The algorithm mixes faster and is more efficient than Gibbs sampling. The runtime depends on the number and shape of the constraints but the algorithm is highly parallelizable. In many cases, we can exploit special structure in the covariance matrices of the untruncated Gaussian to further speed up the runtime. A simple extension of the algorithm permits sampling from distributions whose log-density is piecewise quadratic, as in the "Bayesian Lasso" model.

Abstract:We compute the partition function of the supersymmetric two-dimensional Euclidean black hole geometry described by the SL(2, R)/U (1) superconformal field theory. We decompose the result in terms of characters of the N = 2 superconformal symmetry. We point out puzzling sectors of states besides finding expected discrete and continuous contributions to the partition function. By adding an N = 2 minimal model factor of the correct central charge and projecting on integral N = 2 charges we compute the partition function of the background dual to little string theory in a double scaling limit. We show the precise correspondence between this theory and the background for NS5-branes on a circle, due to an exact description of the background as a null gauging of SL(2, R) × SU (2). Finally, we discuss the interplay between GSO projection and target space geometry.

Abstract:We study D-branes in the mirror pair N = 2 Liouville/supersymmetric SL(2, R)/U (1) coset superconformal field theories. After revisiting the duality between the two models, we build D0, D1 and D2 branes, on the basis of the boundary state construction for the H + 3 conformal field theory. We also construct D0-branes in an orbifold that rotates the angular direction of the cigar. We show how the poles of correlators associated to localized states and bulk interactions naturally decouple in the one-point functions of localized and extended branes. We stress the role played in the analysis of D-brane spectra by primaries in SL(2, R)/U (1) which are descendents of the parent theory.