Unified Treatment of Even and Odd Anharmonic Oscillators of Arbitrary Degree

We present a unified treatment, including higher-order corrections, of anharmonic oscillators of arbitrary even and odd degree. Our approach is based on a dispersion relation which takes advantage of the PT-symmetry of odd potentials for imaginary coupling parameter, and of generalized quantization conditions which take into account instanton contributions. We find a number of explicit new results, including the general behaviour of large-order perturbation theory for arbitrary levels of odd anharmonic oscillators, and subleading corrections to the decay width of excited states for odd potentials, which are numerically significant.Comment: 5 pages, RevTe

The transition temperature of the dilute interacting Bose gas for NN internal degrees of freedom

We calculate explicitly the variation $\delta T_c$ of the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature $T_c$ induced by weak repulsive two-body interactions to leading order in the interaction strength. As shown earlier by general arguments, $\delta T_c/T_c$ is linear in the dimensionless product $an^{1/3}$ to leading order, where $n$ is the density and $a$ the scattering length. This result is non-perturbative, and a direct perturbative calculation of the amplitude is impossible due to infrared divergences familiar from the study of the superfluid helium lambda transition. Therefore we introduce here another standard expansion scheme, generalizing the initial model which depends on one complex field to one depending on $N$ real fields, and calculating the temperature shift at leading order for large $N$. The result is explicit and finite. The reliability of the result depends on the relevance of the large $N$ expansion to the situation N=2, which can in principle be checked by systematic higher order calculations. The large $N$ result agrees remarkably well with recent numerical simulations.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex, submitted to Europhysics Letter

The asymmetric ABAB matrix model

In this letter, it is pointed out that the two matrix model defined by the action S=(1/2)(tr A^2+tr B^2)-(alpha_A/4) tr A^4-(alpha_B/4) tr B^4-(beta/2) tr(AB)^2 can be solved in the large N limit using a generalization of the solution of Kazakov and Zinn-Justin (who considered the symmetric case alpha_A=alpha_B). This model could have useful applications to 3D Lorentzian gravity.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Knot theory and matrix integrals

The large size limit of matrix integrals with quartic potential may be used to count alternating links and tangles. The removal of redundancies amounts to renormalizations of the potential. This extends into two directions: higher genus and the counting of "virtual" links and tangles; and the counting of "coloured" alternating links and tangles. We discuss the asymptotic behavior of the number of tangles as the number of crossings goes to infinity.Comment: chapter of the book Random Matrix Theory, Eds Akemann, Baik and Di Francesc

Symmetric path integrals for stochastic equations with multiplicative noise

A Langevin equation with multiplicative noise is an equation schematically of the form dq/dt = - F(q) + e(q) xi, where e(q) xi is Gaussian white noise whose amplitude e(q) depends on q itself. I show how to convert such equations into path integrals. The definition of the path integral depends crucially on the convention used for discretizing time, and I specifically derive the correct path integral when the convention used is the natural, time-symmetric one that time derivatives are (q_t - q_{t-\Delta t}) / \Delta t and coordinates are (q_t + q_{t-\Delta t}) / 2. [This is the convention that permits standard manipulations of calculus on the action, like naive integration by parts.] It has sometimes been assumed in the literature that a Stratanovich Langevin equation can be quickly converted to a path integral by treating time as continuous but using the rule \theta(t=0) = 1/2. I show that this prescription fails when the amplitude e(q) is q-dependent.Comment: 8 page

Gerbes and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

We prove that a gerbe with a connection can be defined on classical phase space, taking the U(1)-valued phase of certain Feynman path integrals as Cech 2-cocycles. A quantisation condition on the corresponding 3-form field strength is proved to be equivalent to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure available upon reques

Enhancement of field renormalization in scalar theories via functional renormalization group

The flow equations of the Functional Renormalization Group are applied to the O(N)-symmetric scalar theory, for N=1 and N=4, in four Euclidean dimensions, d=4, to determine the effective potential and the renormalization function of the field in the broken phase. In our numerical analysis, the infrared limit, corresponding to the vanishing of the running momentum scale in the equations, is approached to obtain the physical values of the parameters by extrapolation. In the N=4 theory a non-perturbatively large value of the physical renormalization of the longitudinal component of the field is observed. The dependence of the field renormalization on the UV cut-off and on the bare coupling is also investigated.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. To appear in Physical Review