Bosonic ghost correlators: a case study

A bstract There has been a lot of recent work addressing the representation theory that underlies logarithmic conformal field theories. A full understanding of these models will however also need analytic data, in particular the correlation functions. Here, we explore the correlators of one of the most fundamental of all logarithmic models: the bosonic ghost system. In this first part, we use differential equations to show that certain correlation functions may be expressed using hypergeometric functions. Our main result is the consequent verification that there are four-point functions with logarithmic singularities. In a sequel, we will employ Coulomb gas and bootstrap methods to further refine the results presented here.