Time-periodicities in holographic CFTs

Dynamics in AdS spacetimes is characterized by various time-periodicities. The most obvi- ous of these is the time-periodic evolution of linearized fields, whose normal frequencies form
integer-spaced ladders as a direct consequence of the structure of representations of the con- formal group. There are also explicitly known time-periodic phenomena on much longer time
scales inversely proportional to the coupling in the weakly nonlinear regime. We ask what would correspond to these long time periodicities in a holographic CFT, provided that such a CFT reproducing the AdS bulk dynamics in the large central charge limit has been found. The answer is a very large family of multiparticle operators whose conformal dimensions form rational ladders with spacing inversely proportional to the central charge. We give an explicit demonstration of these ideas in the context of a toy model holography involving a $\phi^4$ probe scalar field in AdS, but we expect the applicability of the underlying structure to be much more general. (Based on work in progress with Marine De Clerck and Oleg Evnin.)