Symmetries in Celestial CFT$_d$

Abstract

We use tools from conformal representation theory to classify the symmetries associated to conformally soft operators in celestial CFT (CCFT) in general dimensions $d$. The conformal multiplets in $d>2$ take the form of celestial necklaces whose structure is much richer than the celestial diamonds in $d=2$, it depends on whether $d$ is even or odd and involves mixed-symmetric tensor representations of $SO(d)$. The existence of primary descendants in CCFT multiplets corresponds to (higher derivative) conservation equations for conformally soft operators. We lay out a unified method for constructing the conserved charges associated to operators with primary descendants. In contrast to the infinite local symmetry enhancement in CCFT${}_2$, we find the soft symmetries in CCFT${}_{d>2}$ to be finite-dimensional. The conserved charges that follow directly from soft theorems are trivial in $d>2$, while non-trivial charges associated to (generalized) currents and stress tensor are obtained from the shadow transform of soft operators which we relate to (an analytic continuation of) a specific type of primary descendants. We aim at a pedagogical discussion synthesizing various results in the literature.