Heavy-Heavy-Light Asymptotics from Thermal Correlators

Abstract: We revisit the calculation of spectral densities and heavy-heavy-light (HHL) operator product expansion (OPE) coefficients in three-dimensional conformal field theories using thermal one-point functions on $S^1 \times S^2$. A central element of our analysis is a new inversion formula for one-point functions which is derived via Casimir differential equations. We develop systematic expansions of the spectral density and HHL OPE coefficients in the regime of large $\Delta_H$. We validate our analytic tools by comparing the results with the partial wave expansions of thermal one-point functions in free field theories. The algorithms developed for these expansions make full use of Casimir recursion relations, thereby extending their applicability into the heavy exchange regime. In the end, we observe excellent agreement with our analytic predictions and an improvement of up to three orders of magnitude compared to all previous leading order estimates of the CFT data even for moderate values of $\Delta_H$.