Conformal field theory on the horizon of a BTZ black hole
In a three-dimensional spacetime with negative cosmological constant, general relativity can be written as two copies of SO(2,1) Chern-Simons theory. On a manifold with a boundary, the Chern-Simons theory induces a conformal field theory-Wess-Zumino-Witten theory on the boundary. In this paper, it is shown that with suitable boundary conditions for a Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole, the Wess-Zumino-Witten theory can reduce to a chiral massless scalar field on the horizon.