Chantelle Esper: Bulkcone Singularities and Complex Geodesics

Thermal correlators in holographic CFTs on a sphere exhibit bulk-cone singularities at points connected by null geodesics in the bulk. The operator product expansion analysis of the stress-tensor sector of the correlator shows that there are analogous singularities at spacelike separation for thermal CFTs on a plane. By considering the near-lightcone limit, I will show that complex null geodesics are required to interpret the associated singularities as seen from the OPE. We will see that this assertion also holds outside of the near-lightcone limit, and contains implications for the phase-shift calculation of bulk-cone singularities. Based on recent work of the same title, 2602.12893.