Fusion rules and four-point functions in the AdS3 Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten model

Abstract

We study the operator product expansion in the AdS3 Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten (WZNW) model. The operator-product expansion of primary fields and their spectral flow images is computed from the analytic continuation of the expressions in the H3+ WZNW model, adding spectral flow. We argue that the symmetries of the affine algebra require a truncation which establishes the closure of the fusion rules on the Hilbert space of the theory. Although the physical mechanism determining the decoupling is not completely understood, we present several consistency checks on the results. A preliminary analysis of factorization allows to obtain some properties of four-point functions involving fields in generic sectors of the theory, to verify that they agree with the spectral flow selection rules and to show that the truncation must be realized in physical amplitudes for consistency.