Conformal Turaev-Viro Theory

Abstract

We define and study Conformal Turaev-Viro (CTV) theory, a dual formulation of Virasoro TQFT based on triangulating 3-manifolds with tetrahedra. Edges of the triangulation are labeled by continuous conformal weights, and tetrahedra are glued together weighted by the Cardy density of states. We demonstrate that the CTV partition function is equal to the modular S-transform of the Virasoro TQFT amplitude-squared, $|Z_{Vir}|^2$. This is analogous to a known result for discrete spin networks. The derivation uses a variant of the chain-mail formalism, adapted to the Virasoro context. As a CFT application, we derive formulae for the S-transforms of the squared Virasoro crossing kernels. These results lay the topological foundation to study the exact path integral of pure AdS$_3$ quantum gravity by triangulations.