Characters, coadjoint orbits and Duistermaat-Heckman integrals

. We show that the asymptotics of characters of integrable modules of affine Kac-Moody algebras and of the Virasoro algebra factorize into a divergent contribution of the standard form and a convergent contribution which can be interpreted as a formal DH orbital integral. For some Virasoro modules, our results match the formal DH integrals recently computed by Stanford and Witten. In this case, the

k

-scaling has the same origin as the one which gives rise to classical conformal blocks. Furthermore, we consider reduced spaces of Virasoro coadjoint orbits and we suggest a new invariant which replaces symplectic volume in the infinite dimensional situation. We also consider other modules of the Virasoro algebra (in particular, the modules corresponding to minimal models) and we obtain DH-type expressions which do not correspond to any Virasoro coadjoint orbits. We study volume functions

V (x)

corresponding to formal DH integrals over coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro algebra. We show that they are related by the Hankel transform to spectral densities

h o (E)

recently studied by Saad, Shenker and Stanford.

Review text

Let \(G\) be a compact Lie group with Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\) and \(\chi_\lambda\) the character of an irreducible representation of \(G\) of highest weight \(\lambda\). Kirillov's character formula expresses \(\chi_\lambda(\exp(h))\) for small \(h\in\mathfrak{g}\) in terms of the Fourier transform of the Liouville measure on the associated coadjoint orbit \(\mathcal{O}_\lambda\subseteq\mathfrak{g}^*\). This formula can also be obtained by applying the Duistermaat-Heckman formula to the oscillatory integral over the symplectic manifold \(\mathcal{O}_\lambda\) defining the Fourier transform, which is why the authors refer to these integrals as \emph{Duistermaat-Heckman integrals}. As a consequence, the asymptotic behaviour of the rescaled character \(\chi_{k\lambda}(\exp(h/k))\) as \(k\to\infty\) is of size \((\frac{k}{2\pi})^d\) times a Duistermaat-Heckman integral independent of \(k\), where \(\dim\mathcal{O}_\lambda=2d\). In the paper under review, the authors generalize this phenomenon to coadjoint orbits of central extensions of loop groups and of the diffeomorphism group of the circle. They show that the asymptotics of characters of integrable modules of affine Kac-Moody algebras and of the Virasoro algebra factorize into a divergent contribution of the standard form and a convergent contribution which can be interpreted as a formal Duistermaat-Heckman orbital integral. Furthermore, reduced spaces of Virasoro coadjoint orbits are considered, and the authors suggest a new invariant which replaces symplectic volume in the infinite-dimensional situation. They also consider other modules of the Virasoro algebra (in particular, the modules corresponding to minimal models) and obtain Duistermaat-Heckman type expressions which do not correspond to any Virasoro coadjoint orbits. Moreover, the authors introduce volume functions corresponding to formal Duistermaat-Heckman integrals over coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro algebra and show that they are related by the Hankel transform to the spectral densities recently studied by Saad, Shenker and Stanford.

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