Classical $J\bar T$ symmetries -- three ways -- and a precision holography check

Abstract

The $J\bar T$ deformation is a fully tractable irrelevant deformation of two-dimensional CFTs, which yields a UV-complete QFT that is local and conformal along one lightlike direction and non-local along the remaining one. Such QFTs are interesting, in particular, as toy models for the holographic dual to (near)-extremal black holes. Despite its non-locality, the deformed theory has been shown to posess a (Virasoro-Kac-Moody)$^2$ symmetry algebra, whose action on the non-local side is non-standard. In this article we present, in a unified way, three different perspectives on the classical symmetries of $J\bar T$ - deformed CFTs: Hamiltonian, Lagrangian and holographic, showing how the peculiar action of the symmetries can be recovered in each of them. The perfect match we obtain between the Lagrangian and holographic results constitutes a precision check of the holographic dictionary proposed in [1], which we slightly generalize and improve. We also comment on the interpretation of the Comp\`ere-Song-Strominger boundary conditions from the $J\bar T$ viewpoint.