Correlation functions at the bulk point singularity from the gravitational eikonal S-matrix

Abstract

The bulk point singularity limit of conformal correlation functions in Lorentzian signature acts as a microscope to look into local bulk physics in AdS. From it we can extract flat space scattering processes localized in AdS that ultimate should be related to corresponding observables on the conformal field theory at the boundary. In this paper we use this interesting property to propose a map from flat space s-matrix to conformal correlation functions and try it on perturbative gravitational scattering. In particular, we show that the eikonal limit of gravitation scattering maps to a correlation function of the expected form at the bulk point singularity. We also compute the inverse map recovering a previous proposal in the literature.