Conformal welding of quantum disks and multiple SLE: the non-simple case

Abstract

Two-pointed quantum disks with a weight parameter $W>0$ is a canonical family of finite-volume random surfaces in Liouville quantum gravity. We extend the conformal welding of quantum disks in [AHS23] to the non-simple regime, and give a construction of the multiple SLE associated with any given link pattern for $\kappa\in(4,8)$. Our proof is based on connections between SLE and Liouville conformal field theory (LCFT), where we show that in the conformal welding of multiple forested quantum disks, the surface after welding can be described in terms of LCFT, and the random conformal moduli contains the SLE partition function for the interfaces as a multiplicative factor. As a corollary, for $\kappa\in(4,8)$, we prove the existence of the multiple SLE partition functions, which are smooth functions satisfying a system of PDEs and conformal covariance.