A holographic reduction of Minkowski space–time Original Research Article

Minkowski space can be sliced, outside the light-cone, in terms of Euclidean anti-de Sitter and Lorentzian de Sitter slices. In this paper we investigate what happens when we apply holography to each slice separately. This yields a dual description living on two spheres, which can be interpreted as the boundary of the light-cone. The infinite number of slices gives rise to a continuum family of operators on the two spheres for each separate bulk field. For a free field we explain how the Greenʹs function and (trivial) S-matrix in Minkowski space can be reconstructed in terms of two-point functions of some putative conformal field theory on the two spheres. Based on this we propose a Minkowski/CFT correspondence which can also be applied to interacting fields. We comment on the interpretation of the conformal symmetry of the CFT, and on generalizations to curved space.