Renormalization and vacuum energy for an interacting scalar field in a δ-function potential

Abstract

We study a self-interacting scalar field theory in the presence of a δ-function background potential. The role of surface interactions in obtaining a renormalizable theory is stressed and demonstrated by a two-loop calculation. The necessary counterterms are evaluated by adopting dimensional regularization and the background field method. We also calculate the effective potential for a complex scalar field in a non-simply connected spacetime in the presence of a δ-function potential. The effective potential is evaluated as a function of an arbitrary phase factor associated with the choice of boundary conditions in the non-simply connected spacetime. We obtain asymptotic expansions of the results for both large and small δ-function strengths, and stress how the non-analytic nature of the small strength result vitiates any analysis based on standard weak field perturbation theory.This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical in honour of Stuart Dowker’s 75th birthday devoted to ‘Applications of zeta functions and other spectral functions in mathematics and physics’.