Realizations of conformal and Heisenberg algebras in PP-wave-CFT correspondence

Abstract

We elaborate on the symmetry breaking pattern involved in the Penrose limit of AdS_d+1 × S^d+1 spacetimes and the corresponding limit of the CFT dual. For d = 2 we examine in detail how the symmetries contract to products of rotation and Heisenberg algebras, both from the bulk and CFT points of view. Using a free field realization of these algebras acting on products of elementary fields of the CFT with SO(2) R charge +1, we show that this process of contraction restricts all the fields to a few low angular momentum modes and ensures that the field with R charge -1 does not appear. This provides an understanding of several important aspects of the proposal of Berenstein, Maldacena and Nastase. We also indicate how the contraction can be performed on correlation functions.