Unitary 4-point correlators from classical geometries

Abstract We compute correlators of two heavy and two light operators in the strong coupling and large c limit of the D1D5 CFT which is dual to weakly coupled $$\hbox {AdS}_3$$ AdS3 gravity. The light operators have dimension two and are scalar descendants of the chiral primaries considered in arXiv:1705.09250, while the heavy operators belong to an ensemble of Ramond–Ramond ground states. We derive a general expression for these correlators when the heavy states in the ensemble are close to the maximally spinning ground state. For a particular family of heavy states we also provide a result valid for any value of the spin. In all cases we find that the correlators depend non-trivially on the CFT moduli and are not determined by the symmetries of the theory; however, they have the properties expected for correlators among pure states in a unitary theory, in particular they do not decay at large Lorentzian times