Towards a 2d QFT Analog of the SYK Model

Abstract

We propose a 2D QFT generalization of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, which we argue preserves most of its features. The UV limit of the model is described by $N$ copies of a topological Ising CFT. The full interacting model exhibits conformal symmetry in the IR and an emergent pseudo-Goldstone mode that arises from broken reparametrization symmetry. We find that the effective action of the Goldstone mode matches with the 3D AdS gravity action, viewed as a functional of the boundary metric. We compute the spectral density and show that the leading deviation from conformal invariance looks like a $T \bar{T}$ deformation. We comment on the relation between the IR effective action and Liouville CFT.