Spectral flow and conformal blocks in $AdS_3$

Abstract

In this article we investigate the structure of the four-point functions of the $AdS_3$-WZNW model. We consider the integral expression for the unflowed four-point correlator involving at least one state in the discrete part of the spectrum derived by analytic continuation from the $H_3^+$-WZNW model and we show that the conformal blocks can be obtained from those with an extremal-weight state by means of an intertwining operator. We adapt the procedure for dealing with correlators with a single unit of spectral flow charge and we get a factorized integral expression for the corresponding four-point function. We finally transform the formulas back to the space-time picture.