CFT correlators and mapping class group averages

Abstract

Mapping class group averages appear in the study of 3D gravity partition functions. In this paper, we work with 3D topological field theories to establish a bulk-boundary correspondence between such averages and correlators of 2D rational CFTs whose chiral mapping class group representations are irreducible and satisfy a finiteness property. We show that Ising-type modular fusion categories satisfy these properties on surfaces with or without field insertions, extending results in [Jian et al., JHEP 10 (2020) 129], and we comment on the absence of invertible global symmetries in the examples we consider.