We present a new exact treatment of TT deformed 2D CFT in terms of the worldsheet theory of a non-critical string. The transverse dimensions of the non-critical string are represented by the undeformed CFT, while the two longitudinal light-cone directions are described by two scalar fields X + and X − with free field OPE's but with a modified stress tensor, arranged so that the total central charge adds up to 26. The relation between our X ± field variables and 2D dilaton gravity is indicated. We compute the physical spectrum and the partition function and find a match with known results. We describe how to compute general correlation functions and present an integral expression for the three point function, which can be viewed as an exact formula for the OPE coefficients of the TT deformed theory. We comment on the relationship with other proposed definitions of local operators.

Recently, two groups have made distinct proposals for a de Sitter space that is emergent from conformal field theory (CFT). The first proposal is that, for two-dimensional holographic CFTs, the kinematic space of geodesics on a space-like slice of the asymptotically anti-de Sitter bulk is two-dimensional de Sitter space (dS 2 ), with a metric that can be derived from the entanglement entropy of intervals in the CFT. In the second proposal, de Sitter dynamics emerges naturally from the first law of entanglement entropy for perturbations around the vacuum state of CFTs. We provide support for the equivalence of these two emergent spacetimes in the vacuum case and beyond. In particular, we study the kinematic spaces of nontrivial solutions of 3d gravity, including the BTZ black string, BTZ black hole, and conical singularities. We argue that the resulting spaces are generically globally hyperbolic spacetimes that support dynamics given boundary conditions at future infinity. For the BTZ black string, corresponding to a thermal state of the CFT, we show that both prescriptions lead to an emergent hyperbolic patch of dS 2 . We offer a general method for relating kinematic space and the auxiliary de Sitter space that is valid in the vacuum and thermal cases.