Pure gravity OPE density for genus-two handlebody in $\text{AdS}_3$

Abstract

In this work, we compute the operator product expansion density for the genus-two handlebody by exploiting its duality with extremal conformal field theories arXiv:0710.2129. Using a Poincaré construction, we analytically determine the first- and second-order corrections in the pinching parameter to the genus-two OPE density through a direct inversion of the partition function. As a consistency check, we also compute the genus-one density within the same Poincaré framework and find perfect agreement with the result obtained from the lightcone bootstrap analysis arXiv: 1906.04184. It is known that, at genus one, the OPE density of extremal CFTs exhibits a negativity pathology for states lying just above the black-hole threshold. We show that this pathology continues to persist at genus two, despite the emergence of a nontrivial inversion kernel. In particular, the OPE density associated with states of both odd and even spin $j_i$ remains negative within a very narrow band above the black-hole threshold. We further analyze the sharp transition from large positive to large negative values of the OPE density across a curve along which the density vanishes.