The Complex Liouville string

by Victor Alonso Rodriguez (UC, Santa Barbara)

Tuesday 29 Apr 2025, 17:00 → 19:00 Europe/Zurich

4/3-006 - TH Conference Room (CERN)

I will introduce the complex Liouville string, a solvable critical worldsheet string theory obtained by coupling two Liouville theories with complex conjugate central charges, c = 13 ± is. By exploiting the non-perturbative structure of Liouville CFT, we bootstrap the amplitudes of this string theory and uncover a holographic duality with a double-scaled two-matrix model (or equivalently, a spectral curve) with rich non-perturbative properties. I will also explore how this theory fits within the broader landscape of minimal string theories. Furthermore, the complex Liouville string can be reinterpreted semi-classically as a 2d dilaton gravity theory with a sine potential for the dilaton, allowing for solutions with both signs of the cosmological constant—that is, both AdS and dS vacua. (online talk)