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arXiv · 2209.14379

Infinite distances in multicritical CFTs and higher-spin holography

Ivano Basile·Andrea Campoleoni·Simon Pekar·Evgeny Skvortsov
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Abstract

We investigate the swampland distance conjecture in higher-spin gravity. To this end, we study multicritical generalizations of large-$N$ vector models, bosonic and fermionic, and we compute the quantum information distance along selected renormalization-group trajectories toward the higher-spin limit. In striking contrast to the expected exponential decay of higher-spin masses or anomalous dimensions, we find that infinite-distance limits in these models lead to a power-like decay. This suggests that stringy exponential decays are characteristic of matrix-like gauge theories, rather than vector models. We corroborate this notion studying the information distance along coupling variations in Chern-Simons-matter CFTs, where matrix-like degrees of freedom dominate over vector-like ones.

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Ivano Basile, Andrea Campoleoni, Simon Pekar, Evgeny Skvortsov. 2022-09-28. Infinite distances in multicritical CFTs and higher-spin holography. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep03(2023)075

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