Gaussian effective potential for the U(1) Higgs model

In order to investigate the Higgs mechanism nonperturbatively, we compute the Gaussian effective potential of the U(1) Higgs model (“scalar electrodynamics”). We show that the same simple result is obtained in three different formalisms. A general covariant gauge is used, with Landau gauge proving to be optimal. The renormalization generalizes the “autonomous” renormalization for λ?⁴ theory and requires a particular relationship between the bare gauge coupling e _B and the bare scalar self-coupling λ _B. When both couplings are small, then λ is proportional to e⁴ and the scalar/vector mass-squared ratio is of order e², as in the classic 1-loop analysis of Coleman and Weinberg. However, as λ increases, e reaches a maximum value and then decreases, and in this “nonperturbative” regime the Higgs scalar can be much heavier than the vector boson. We compare our results to the autonomously renormalized 1-loop effective potential, finding close agreement in the physical predictions. The main phenomenological implication is a Higgs mass of about 2 TeV.     

Light quark masses from scalar sum rules

In this work, the mass of the strange quark is calculated from QCD sum rules for the divergence of the strangeness-changing vector current. The phenomenological scalar spectral function which enters the sum rule is determined from our previous work on strangeness-changing scalar form factors [1]. For the running strange mass in the scheme, we find . Making use of this result and the light quark mass ratios obtained from chiral perturbation theory, we are also able to extract the masses of the lighter quarks and . We then obtain and . In addition, we present an updated value for the light quark condensate. Received: 18 October 2001 / Revised version: 22 January 2002 / Published online: 12 April 2002     

Induced gauge theory on a noncommutative space

We consider a scalar φ⁴ theory on canonically deformed Euclidean space in 4 dimensions with an additional oscillator potential. This model is known to be renormalisable. An exterior gauge field is coupled in a gauge invariant manner to the scalar field. We extract the dynamics for the gauge field from the divergent terms of the 1-loop effective action, using a matrix basis and propose an action for the noncommutative gauge theory, which is a candidate for a renormalisable model. PACS 11.10.Nx; 11.15.-q     

Short-distance expansion of Wilson loops,gluon condensation and Monte Carlo lattice results

The short-distance expansion of Wilson loops in terms of composite gluon operators (gluon condensate) is studied. The 2-loop perturbative contribution to Wilson loop rations is evaluated. Monte Carlo lattice results for SU(2) gluodynamics are analyzed in terms of this expansion. Consistent results for the gluon condensate are found.     

Condensate preserving the symmetry of the Lagrangian. Symmetry breakdown

A multicomponent scalar field may preserve the symmetry of the Lagrangian when the stability of the perturbation theory vacuum is lost. This leads to the appearance of a degenerate vacuum, whose excitation spectrum slightly differs from the spectrum observed in the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking. The possibility of the appearance of such a condensate in a QCD vacuum is discussed.     

Methods for detecting acceleration radiation in a Bose-Einstein condensate

We propose and study methods for detecting Unruh-like acceleration radiation effects in a Bose-Einstein condensate in a (1+1)-dimensional setup. The Bogoliubov vacuum of a Bose-Einstein condensate is used to simulate a scalar field theory, and accelerated atom dots or optical lattices serve as detectors of phonon radiation due to acceleration effects. In particular, we study the dispersive effects of the Bogoliubov spectrum on the ideal case of exact thermalization. Our results suggest that acceleration radiation effects can be observed using currently accessible experimental methods.     

Novel theoretical constraints for color-octet scalar models

We study the theoretical constraints on a model whose scalar sector contains one color octet and one or two color singlet SU(2)L doublets. To ensure unitarity of the theory, we constrain the parameters of the scalar potential for the first time at the next-to-leading order in perturbation theory. Moreover, we derive new conditions guaranteeing the stability of the potential. We employ the HEPfit package to extract viable parameter regions at the electroweak scale and test the stability of the renormalization group evolution up to the multi-Te V region. Furthermore,we set upper limits on the scalar mass splittings. All results are given for both cases with and without a second scalar color singlet.     

Quasinormal Modes of Charged Dilaton Black Holes in 2 + 1 Dimensions

We have studied the scalar perturbation of static charged dilaton black holes in 2 + 1 dimensions. The black hole considered here is a solution to the low-energy string theory in 2 + 1 dimensions. It is asymptotic to the anti-de Sitter space. The exact values of quasinormal modes for the scalar perturbations are calculated. For both the charged and uncharged cases, the quasinormal frequencies are pure-imaginary leading to purely damped modes for the perturbations.     

Counting loop diagrams: computational complexity of higher-order amplitude evaluation

We discuss the computational complexity of the perturbative evaluation of scattering amplitudes, both by the Caravaglios-Moretti algorithm and by direct evaluation of the individual diagrams. For a self-interacting scalar theory, we determine the complexity as a function of the number of external legs. We describe a method for obtaining the number of topologically inequivalent Feynman graphs containing closed loops, and apply this to 1- and 2-loop amplitudes. We also compute the number of graphs weighted by their symmetry factors, thus arriving at exact and asymptotic estimates for the average symmetry factor of diagrams. We present results for the asymptotic number of diagrams up to 10 loops, and prove that the average symmetry factor approaches unity as the number of external legs becomes large.Received: 2 June 2004, Published online: 23 July 2004Research supported by the EU contract no. HPMD-CT-2001-00105     

Greybody factors of charged dilaton black holes in 2 + 1 dimensions

We have studied the scalar perturbation of charged dilaton black holes in 2+1 dimensions. The black hole considered here is a solution to the low-energy string theory in 2+1 dimensions. The exact decay rates and the grey body factors for the massless minimally coupled scalar is computed for both the charged and the uncharged dilaton black holes. The charged and the uncharged black hole show similar behavior for grey body factors, reflection coefficients and decay rates.This revised version was published online in April 2005. The publishing date was inserted.     

Cooper pairs? magnetic moment in MCFL color superconductivity

We investigate the effect of the alignment of the magnetic moments of Cooper pairs of charged quarks that form at high density in three-flavor quark matter. The high-density phase of this matter in the presence of a magnetic field is known to be the Magnetic Color-Flavor-Locked (MCFL) phase of color superconductivity. We derive the Fierz identities of the theory and show how the explicit breaking of the rotational symmetry by the uniform magnetic field opens new channels of interactions and allows the formation of a new diquark condensate. The new order parameter is a spin-1 condensate proportional to the component in the field direction of the average magnetic moment of the pairs of charged quarks. The magnitude of the spin-1 condensate becomes comparable to the larger of the two scalar gaps in the region of large fields. The existence of the spin-1 condensate is unavoidable, as in the presence of a magnetic field there is no solution of the gap equations with nonzero scalar gaps and zero magnetic moment condensate. This is consistent with the fact that the extra condensate does not break any symmetry that has not already been broken by the known MCFL gaps. The spin-1 condensate enhances the condensation energy of pairs formed by charged quarks and the magnetization of the system. We discuss the possible consequences of the new order parameter on the issue of the chromomagnetic instability that appears in color superconductivity at moderate density.     

Systematic field theory of the RNA glass transition

We prove that the L?ssig-Wiese (LW) field theory for the freezing transition of the secondary structure of random RNA is renormalizable to all orders in perturbation theory. The proof relies on a formulation of the model in terms of random walks and on the use of the multilocal operator product expansion. Renormalizability allows us to work in the simpler scheme of open polymers, and to obtain the critical exponents at 2-loop order. It also allows us to prove some exact exponent identities, conjectured by LW.     

Non-perturbative aspects of screening phenomena in abelian and non-abelian gauge theories

When computed to one-loop order in resummed perturbation theory, the non-abelian Debye mass appears to be logarithmically sensitive to the magnetic scale g²T. More generally, we show that in higher orders power-like infrared divergences forbid the use of perturbation theory to calculate the corrections to Debye screening. A similar infrared problem occurs in the determination of the mass-shell behaviour for the scalar propagator in (2+1)-dimensional scalar electrodynamics. In this context, we provide a non-perturbative approach which solves the infrared problems and allows for an accurate calculation of the scalar propagator in the vicinity of the mass shell.     

Does one see gluon condensation after subtraction of mean field perturbation theory from monte carlo data?

We do a linearised mean field calculation in axial gauge for the four dimensional mixed fundamental adjointSU (2) lattice gauge theory and extract the gluon condensate parameter from the expectation values of the plaquette and the action by subtracting mean field perturbation theory from monte carlo data.     

The IR stability of de Sitter QFT: physical initial conditions

This work uses Lorentz-signature in-in perturbation theory to analyze the late-time behavior of correlators in time-dependent interacting massive scalar field theory in de Sitter space. We study a scenario recently considered by Krotov and Polyakov in which the coupling g turns on smoothly at finite time, starting from g = 0 in the far past where the state is taken to be the (free) Bunch–Davies vacuum. Our main result is that the resulting correlators (which we compute at the one-loop level) approach those of the interacting Hartle–Hawking state at late times. We argue that similar results should hold for other physically-motivated choices of initial conditions. This behavior is to be expected from recent quantum “no hair” theorems for interacting massive scalar field theory in de Sitter space which established similar results to all orders in perturbation theory for a dense set of states in the Hilbert space. Our current work (1) indicates that physically motivated initial conditions lie in this dense set, (2) provides a Lorentz-signature counter-part to the Euclidean techniques used to prove such theorems, and (3) provides an explicit example of the relevant renormalization techniques.     

Interaction Between Massive and Massless Gravitons by Perturbing Topological Field Theory

We test the Wu gauge theory of gravity with massive gravitons in the perturbing topological field theory framework.We show that the computation of the correlation function between massive and massless gravitons is reported up to 4-loop and appears to be unaffected by radiative correction.This result ensures the stability of the linking number between massive and massless gravitons with respect to the local perturbation,a result with potential wider applications in cosmology.     

General analysis ofn-loop corrections in the 2PPI variational approach to λφ4

We present the general analysis of then-loop contribution in a new variational approach to quantum field theory, applied to the scalar model λφ⁴, which is based on the use of an effective action for the local composite operator \(\hat \phi ^2 \) . In a previous paper [1] the three-loop analysis was performed and it was found that the differences with the one loop calculation were very small. We have now generalised this argument for any arbitrary but finite loop calculation. In particular, we examine stability of the precarious phase.     

Near-zero-field nuclear magnetic resonance

We investigate nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in near zero field, where the Zeeman interaction can be treated as a perturbation to the electron mediated scalar interaction (J?coupling). This is in stark contrast to the high-field case, where heteronuclear J?couplings are normally treated as a small perturbation. We show that the presence of very small magnetic fields results in splitting of the zero-field NMR lines, imparting considerable additional information to the pure zero-field spectra. Experimental results are in good agreement with first-order perturbation theory and with full numerical simulation when perturbation theory breaks down. We present simple rules for understanding the splitting patterns in near-zero-field NMR, which can be applied to molecules with nontrivial spectra.     

Feynman rules for Coulomb gauge QCD

The Coulomb gauge in nonabelian gauge theories is attractive in principle, but beset with technical difficulties in perturbation theory. In addition to ordinary Feynman integrals, there are, at 2-loop order, Christ–Lee (CL) terms, derived either by correctly ordering the operators in the Hamiltonian, or by resolving ambiguous Feynman integrals. Renormalization theory depends on the sub-graph structure of ordinary Feynman graphs. The CL terms do not have a sub-graph structure. We show how to carry out renormalization in the presence of CL terms, by re-expressing these as ‘pseudo-Feynman’ integrals. We also explain how energy divergences cancel.