Three-dimensional gravity, point particles and Liouville theory (Q2724845)

This paper elaborates on the bulk/boundary relation between negative cosmological constant three-dimensional gravity and Liouville field theory (LFT). The author develops an interpretation of LFT non-normalizable states in terms of particles moving in the bulk. This interpretation is suggested by the fact that `heavy' vertex operators of LFT create conical singularities and thus should correspond to point particles moving inside AdS. He confirms this expectation by comparing the semiclassical approximation to the LET two-point function with the appropriately regularized gravity action evaluated on the corresponding metric.