Work

Thermal spectral function asymptotics and black hole singularity in holography

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: We investigate the analytic structure of thermal spectral function of holographic conformal field theories (CFTs), synthesizing recent developments into a set of observations about its asymptotics. Specifically, for a class of scalar primaries with integral dimension, we demonstrate factorization of the exact spectral function into a polynomial piece, which captures the vacuum dynamics, and a nonperturbative piece, which controls its asymptotics. Using exact WKB techniques, we derive a transseries expression for the latter. We use this information to deduce the singular loci of a spatially averaged thermofield double correlator in the complex time plane. Such singularities have been argued to encode information regarding the black hole singularity in the dual spacetime. Our results give a refinement of these statements by capturing the momentum dependence.

Source: Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

DOI: 10.1103/tzm2-jjvg

Authors: Hewei Frederic Jia, Mukund Rangamani

Institution: Tsinghua University

Language: English

Topic: Black Holes and Theoretical Physics

Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, University of California, Stony Brook University

Awards: HIGH ENERGY PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH, Programs on Critical Problems in Physics, Astrophysics and Biophysics at the Aspen Center for Physics