Partial spectral flow in the D1D5 CFT

Abstract

The two-dimensional 𝒩 = 4 superconformal algebra has a free field realization with four bosons and four fermions. There is an automorphism of the algebra called spectral flow. Under spectral flow, the four fermions are transformed together. In this paper, we study partial spectral flow where only two of the four fermions are transformed. Partial spectral flow is applied to the D1D5 CFT where a marginal deformation moves the CFT away from the free point. The partial spectral flow is broken by the deformation. We show that this effect can be studied due to a transformation of the deformation which is well-defined under partial spectral flow. As a result in the spectrum, we demonstrate how to compute the second-order energy lift of a D1D5P state through its partial spectral flowed state. We find that D1D5P states related by partial spectral flow do not have the same lift in general.