1,218 research outputs found
A note on the improvement ambiguity of the stress tensor and the critical limits of correlation functions
I study various properties of the critical limits of correlators containing
insertions of conserved and anomalous currents. In particular, I show that the
improvement term of the stress tensor can be fixed unambiguously, studying the
RG interpolation between the UV and IR limits. The removal of the improvement
ambiguity is encoded in a variational principle, which makes use of sum rules
for the trace anomalies a and a'. Compatible results follow from the analysis
of the RG equations. I perform a number of self-consistency checks and discuss
the issues in a large set of theories.Comment: 15 page
Infinite reduction of couplings in non-renormalizable quantum field theory
I study the problem of renormalizing a non-renormalizable theory with a
reduced, eventually finite, set of independent couplings. The idea is to look
for special relations that express the coefficients of the irrelevant terms as
unique functions of a reduced set of independent couplings lambda, such that
the divergences are removed by means of field redefinitions plus
renormalization constants for the lambda's. I consider non-renormalizable
theories whose renormalizable subsector R is interacting and does not contain
relevant parameters. The "infinite" reduction is determined by i) perturbative
meromorphy around the free-field limit of R, or ii) analyticity around the
interacting fixed point of R. In general, prescriptions i) and ii) mutually
exclude each other. When the reduction is formulated using i), the number of
independent couplings remains finite or slowly grows together with the order of
the expansion. The growth is slow in the sense that a reasonably small set of
parameters is sufficient to make predictions up to very high orders. Instead,
in case ii) the number of couplings generically remains finite. The infinite
reduction is a tool to classify the irrelevant interactions and address the
problem of their physical selection.Comment: 40 pages; v2: more explanatory comments; appeared in JHE
Higher-spin current multiplets in operator-product expansions
Various formulas for currents with arbitrary spin are worked out in general
space-time dimension, in the free field limit and, at the bare level, in
presence of interactions. As the n-dimensional generalization of the
(conformal) vector field, the (n/2-1)-form is used. The two-point functions and
the higher-spin central charges are evaluated at one loop. As an application,
the higher-spin hierarchies generated by the stress-tensor operator-product
expansion are computed in supersymmetric theories. The results exhibit an
interesting universality.Comment: 19 pages. Introductory paragraph, misprint corrected and updated
references. CQG in pres
Low-energy Phenomenology Of Scalarless Standard-Model Extensions With High-Energy Lorentz Violation
We consider renormalizable Standard-Model extensions that violate Lorentz
symmetry at high energies, but preserve CPT, and do not contain elementary
scalar fields. A Nambu--Jona-Lasinio mechanism gives masses to fermions and
gauge bosons, and generates composite Higgs fields at low energies. We study
the effective potential at the leading order of the large-N_{c} expansion,
prove that there exists a broken phase and study the phase space. In general,
the minimum may break invariance under boosts, rotations and CPT, but we give
evidence that there exists a Lorentz invariant phase. We study the spectrum of
composite bosons and the low-energy theory in the Lorentz phase. Our approach
predicts relations among the parameters of the low-energy theory. We find that
such relations are compatible with the experimental data, within theoretical
errors. We also study the mixing among generations, the emergence of the CKM
matrix and neutrino oscillations.Comment: 32 pages; v2: typos corrected, more references, some more comments -
PR
HyperK\"ahler quotients and N=4 gauge theories in D=2
We consider certain N=4 supersymmetric gauge theories in D=2 coupled to
quaternionic matter multiplets in a minimal way. These theories admit as
effective theories sigma-models on non-trivial HyperK\"ahler manifolds obtained
as HyperK\"ahler quotients. The example of ALE manifolds is discussed. (Based
on a talk given by P. Fr\'e at the F. Gursey Memorial Conference, Istanbul,
June 1994).Comment: 22 pages, Latex, no figure
Search for flow invariants in even and odd dimensions
A flow invariant in quantum field theory is a quantity that does not depend
on the flow connecting the UV and IR conformal fixed points. We study the flow
invariance of the most general sum rule with correlators of the trace Theta of
the stress tensor. In even (four and six) dimensions we recover the results
known from the gravitational embedding. We derive the sum rules for the trace
anomalies a and a' in six dimensions. In three dimensions, where the
gravitational embedding is more difficult to use, we find a non-trivial
vanishing relation for the flow integrals of the three- and four-point
functions of Theta. Within a class of sum rules containing finitely many terms,
we do not find a non-vanishing flow invariant of type a in odd dimensions. We
comment on the implications of our results.Comment: 21 pages, v2: expanded introduction, published in NJ
Renormalizable acausal theories of classical gravity coupled with interacting quantum fields
We prove the renormalizability of various theories of classical gravity
coupled with interacting quantum fields. The models contain vertices with
dimensionality greater than four, a finite number of matter operators and a
finite or reduced number of independent couplings. An interesting class of
models is obtained from ordinary power-counting renormalizable theories,
letting the couplings depend on the scalar curvature R of spacetime. The
divergences are removed without introducing higher-derivative kinetic terms in
the gravitational sector. The metric tensor has a non-trivial running, even if
it is not quantized. The results are proved applying a certain map that
converts classical instabilities, due to higher derivatives, into classical
violations of causality, whose effects become observable at sufficiently high
energies. We study acausal Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with an R-dependent gauge
coupling in detail. We derive all-order formulas for the beta functions of the
dimensionality-six gravitational vertices induced by renormalization. Such beta
functions are related to the trace-anomaly coefficients of the matter
subsector.Comment: 36 pages; v2: CQG proof-corrected versio
A review of the role of ultrasound biomicroscopy in glaucoma associated with rare diseases of the anterior segment
Ultrasound biomicroscopy is a non-invasive imaging technique, which allows high-resolution evaluation of the anatomical features of the anterior segment of the eye regardless of optical media transparency. This technique provides diagnostically significant information in vivo for the cornea, anterior chamber, chamber angle, iris, posterior chamber, zonules, ciliary body, and lens, and is of great value in assessment of the mechanisms of glaucoma onset. The purpose of this paper is to review the use of ultrasound biomicroscopy in the diagnosis and management of rare diseases of the anterior segment such as mesodermal dysgenesis of the neural crest, iridocorneal endothelial syndrome, phakomatoses, and metabolic disorders
More on the Subtraction Algorithm
We go on in the program of investigating the removal of divergences of a
generical quantum gauge field theory, in the context of the Batalin-Vilkovisky
formalism. We extend to open gauge-algebrae a recently formulated algorithm,
based on redefinitions of the parameters of the
classical Lagrangian and canonical transformations, by generalizing a well-
known conjecture on the form of the divergent terms. We also show that it is
possible to reach a complete control on the effects of the subtraction
algorithm on the space of the gauge-fixing parameters. A
principal fiber bundle with a connection
is defined, such that the canonical transformations are gauge
transformations for . This provides an intuitive geometrical
description of the fact the on shell physical amplitudes cannot depend on
. A geometrical description of the effect of the subtraction
algorithm on the space of the physical parameters is
also proposed. At the end, the full subtraction algorithm can be described as a
series of diffeomorphisms on , orthogonal to
(under which the action transforms as a scalar), and gauge transformations on
. In this geometrical context, a suitable concept of predictivity is
formulated. We give some examples of (unphysical) toy models that satisfy this
requirement, though being neither power counting renormalizable, nor finite.Comment: LaTeX file, 37 pages, preprint SISSA/ISAS 90/94/E
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