Low-energy Effective Field Theory Research Articles

Gravity as a Quantum Field Theory

Classical gravity is understood as the geometry of spacetime, and it seems very different from the other known interactions. In this review, I will instead stress the analogies: Like strong interactions, the low energy effective field theory of gravity is related to a nonlinearly realized symmetry, and like electroweak interactions, it is a gauge theory in Higgs phase, with a massive connection. I will also discuss the possibility of finding a UV complete quantum field theoretic description of all interactions.

Effective Field Theory islands from perturbative and nonperturbative four-graviton amplitudes

Theoretical data obtained from physically sensible field and string theory models suggest that gravitational Effective Field Theories (EFTs) live on islands that are tiny compared to current general bounds determined from unitarity, causality, crossing symmetry, and a good high-energy behavior. In this work, we present explicit perturbative and nonperturbative 2 → 2 graviton scattering amplitudes and their associated low-energy expansion in spacetime dimensions D ≥ 4 to support this notion. Our new results include a first example of gravity weakly coupled to a nonperturbative effective action. We show that, at energies below the mass of its nonperturbative matter, the D = 4, mathcal{N} = 1 supersymmetric field theory in the confined phase lies on the same islands identified using four-dimensional perturbative models based on string theory and minimally-coupled matter circulating a loop. Furthermore, we generalize the previous four-dimensional perturbative models based on string theory and minimally-coupled massive spin-0 and spin-1 states circulating in the loop to D dimensions. Remarkably, we again find that the low-energy EFT coefficients lie on small islands. These results offer a useful guide towards constraining possible extensions of Einstein gravity.

Field-theoretic functional renormalization group formalism for non-Fermi liquids and its application to the antiferromagnetic quantum critical metal in two dimensions

To capture the universal low-energy physics of metals within effective field theories, one has to generalize the usual notion of scale invariance and renormalizable field theory due to the presence of intrinsic scales (Fermi momenta). In this paper, we develop a field-theoretic functional renormalization group formalism for full low-energy effective field theories of non-Fermi liquids that include all gapless modes around the Fermi surface. The formalism is applied to the non-Fermi liquid that arises at the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point in two space dimensions. In the space of coupling functions, an interacting fixed point arises at a point with momentum-independent couplings and vanishing nesting angle. In theories deformed with non-zero nesting angles, coupling functions acquire universal momentum profiles controlled by the bare nesting angles at low energies before flowing to superconducting states in the low-energy limit. The superconducting instability is unavoidable because lukewarm electrons that are coherent enough to be susceptible to pairing end up being subject to a renormalized attractive interaction with its minimum strength set by the nesting angle irrespective of the bare four-fermion coupling. Despite the inevitable superconducting instability, theories with small bare nesting angles and bare four-fermion couplings that are repulsive or weakly attractive must pass through the region with slow RG flow due to the proximity to the non-Fermi liquid fixed point. The bottleneck region controls the scaling behaviours of the normal state and the quasi-universal pathway from the non-Fermi liquid to superconductivity. In the limit that the nesting angle is small, the non-Fermi liquid scaling dictates the physics over a large window of energy scale above the superconducting transition temperature.

Partition functions and fibering operators on the Coulomb branch of 5d SCFTs

We study 5d mathcal{N} = 1 supersymmetric field theories on closed five-manifolds mathcal{M} 5 which are principal circle bundles over simply-connected Kähler four-manifolds, mathcal{M} 4, equipped with the Donaldson-Witten twist. We propose a new approach to compute the supersymmetric partition function on mathcal{M} 5 through the insertion of a fibering operator, which introduces a non-trivial fibration over mathcal{M} 4, in the 4d topologically twisted field theory. We determine the so-called Coulomb branch partition function on any such mathcal{M} 5, which is conjectured to be the holomorphic ‘integrand’ of the full partition function. We precisely match the low-energy effective field theory approach to explicit one-loop computations, and we discuss the effect of non-perturbative 5d BPS particles in this context. When mathcal{M} 4 is toric, we also reconstruct our Coulomb branch partition function by appropriately gluing Nekrasov partition functions. As a by-product of our analysis, we provide strong new evidence for the validity of the Lockhart-Vafa formula for the five-sphere partition function.

Long-lived heavy neutral leptons from mesons in effective field theory

In the framework of the low-energy effective field theory of the Standard Model extended with heavy neutral leptons (HNLs), we calculate the production rates of HNLs from meson decays triggered by dimension-six operators. We consider both lepton-number-conserving and lepton-number-violating four-fermion operators involving either a pair of HNLs or a single HNL. Assuming that HNLs are long-lived, we perform simulations and investigate the reach of the proposed far detectors at the high-luminosity LHC to (i) active-heavy neutrino mixing and (ii) the Wilson coefficients associated with the effective operators, for HNL masses below the mass of the B-meson. We further convert the latter to the associated new-physics scales. Our results show that scales in excess of hundreds of TeV and the active-heavy mixing squared as small as 10−15 can be probed by these experiments.

Finite-temperature dynamics in gapped one-dimensional models in the sine-Gordon family

The sine-Gordon model appears as the low-energy effective field theory of various one-dimensional gapped quantum systems. Here we investigate the dynamics of generic, nonintegrable systems belonging to the sine-Gordon family at finite temperature within the semiclassical approach. Focusing on timescales where the effect of nontrivial quasiparticle scatterings becomes relevant, we obtain universal results for the long-time behavior of dynamical correlation functions. We find that correlation functions of vertex operators behave neither ballistically nor diffusively but follow a stretched exponential decay in time. We also study the full counting statistics of the topological current and find that distribution of the transferred charge is non-Gaussian with its cumulants scaling nonuniformly in time.

Generalized symmetry breaking scales and weak gravity conjectures

We explore the notion of approximate global symmetries in quantum field theory and quantum gravity. We show that a variety of conjectures about quantum gravity, including the weak gravity conjecture, the distance conjecture, and the magnetic and axion versions of the weak gravity conjecture can be motivated by the assumption that generalized global symmetries should be strongly broken within the context of low-energy effective field theory, i.e. at a characteristic scale less than the Planck scale where quantum gravity effects become important. For example, the assumption that the electric one-form symmetry of Maxwell theory should be strongly broken below the Planck scale implies the weak gravity conjecture. Similarly, the violation of generalized non-invertible symmetries is closely tied to analogs of this conjecture for non-abelian gauge theory. This reasoning enables us to unify these conjectures with the absence of global symmetries in quantum gravity.

Effective Field Theory Description of Horizon-Fluid Determines the Scrambling Time

Black hole horizons interact with external fields when matter or energy falls through them. Such non-stationary black hole horizons can be described using viscous fluid equations. This work attempts to describe this process using effective field theory methods. Such a description can provide important insights beyond classical black hole physics. In this work, we construct a low-energy effective field theory description for the horizon-fluid of a 4-dimensional, asymptotically flat, Einstein black hole. The effective field theory of the dynamical horizon has two ingredients: degrees of freedom involved in the interaction with external fields and symmetry. The dual requirements of incorporating near-horizon symmetries (S1 diffeomorphism) and possessing length scales due to external perturbations are naturally satisfied if the theory on the non-stationary black hole horizon is a deformed Conformal Field Theory (CFT). For the homogeneous external perturbations, at the lowest order, this leads to a (2+1)-dimensional massive scalar field where the mass is related to the extent of the deformation of the CFT. We determine the mass by obtaining the correlation function corresponding to the effective field and relating it to the bulk viscosity of the horizon-fluid. Additionally, we show that the coefficient of bulk viscosity of the horizon-fluid determines the time required for black holes to scramble. Furthermore, we argue that matter-field modes with energy less than meff falling into the horizon thermalize more slowly. Finally, we construct a microscopic toy model for the horizon-fluid that reduces to the effective field theory with a single scalar degree of freedom. We then discuss the usefulness of the effective field model in understanding how information escapes from a black hole at late times.

Nonperturbative effects in neutrino magnetic moments

In this paper, we calculate the QCD nonperturbative contributions of the neutrino-quark tensor operators to the neutrino magnetic moments by matching onto the chiral perturbation theory at low energies. These nonperturbative contributions can be compared to the perturbative ones, which are induced from one-loop mixing when performing the renormalization group evolutions from $\mu=m_W$ down to $\mu=2~\mathrm{GeV}$. We then constrain the dipole and tensor Wilson coefficients of the low-energy neutrino effective field theory (LNEFT) separately from the neutrino-electron scattering with Borexino data and coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) with COHERENT data to show the competition between these two contributions, at the renormalization scales $\mu=2~\mathrm{GeV}$ and $\mu=m_W$ in the $\bar{\mathrm{MS}}$ scheme. In the neutrino-electron scattering, it is found that the nonperturbative contributions dominate for the coefficients involving up and down quarks, while they are expected to be of the same order of magnitude as the perturbative contributions for the coefficients involving strange quark. As for constraints in the CE$\nu$NS, the tensor operators can contribute to the process through either direct or indirect way. As a result, the indirect contributions including nonperturbative and perturbative parts for all couplings become negligible in comparison with the direct ones. As the nonperturbative contributions crucially depend on the value of $c_T$, its inputs will affect the extraction of limits on the tensor LNEFT Wilson coefficients. We compute the upper bounds on these coefficients with $c_T$ quoting from the model and lattice estimates.

Topological superconductor from the quantum Hall phase: Effective field theory description

We derive low-energy effective field theories for the quantum anomalous Hall and topological superconducting phases. The quantum Hall phase is realized in terms of free fermions with nonrelativistic dispersion relation, possessing a global $U(1)$ symmetry. We couple this symmetry with a background gauge field and compute the effective action by integrating out the gapped fermions. In spite of the fact that the corresponding Dirac operator governing the dynamics of the original fermions is nonrelativistic, the leading contribution in the effective action is a usual Abelian $U(1)$ Chern-Simons term. The proximity to a conventional superconductor induces a pairing potential in the quantum Hall state, favoring the formation of Cooper pairs. When the pairing is strong enough, it drives the system to a topological superconducting phase, hosting Majorana fermions. Even though the continuum $U(1)$ symmetry is broken down to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ one, we can forge fictitious $U(1)$ symmetries that enable us to derive the effective action for the topological superconducting phase, also given by a Chern-Simons theory. To eliminate spurious states coming from the artificial symmetry enlargement, we demand that the fields in the effective action are $O(2)$ instead of $U(1)$ gauge fields. In the $O(2)$ case we have to sum over the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ bundles in the partition function, which projects out the states that are not $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariants. The corresponding edge theory is the $U(1)/\mathbb{Z}_2$ orbifold, which contains Majorana fermions in its operator content.

Surface waves and bulk Ruderman mode of a bosonic superfluid vortex crystal in the lowest Landau level

We determine and analyze collective normal modes of a finite disk-shaped two-dimensional vortex crystal formed in a compressible bosonic superfluid in an artificial magnetic field. Using the microscopic Gross-Pitaevskii theory in the lowest Landau level approximation, we generate vortex crystal ground states and solve the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for small amplitude collective oscillations. We find chiral surface waves that propagate at frequencies larger than those of the bulk Tkachenko modes. Furthermore, we study low frequency bulk excitations and identify a torsional Ruderman mode, which we find is well-described by a previously developed low-energy effective field theory.

Spacetime instability and quantum gravity as low energy effective field theory

We discuss spacetime instability for effective field theories of quantum gravity. The effective action of gravity introduces infinite higher derivative curvature terms $R^{2}, { R }_{ \mu \nu }{ R }^{ \mu \nu }, R_{\mu\nu\kappa\lambda} R^{\mu\nu\kappa\lambda}\dots$. Although these higher derivative curvature terms are indispensable to construct the self-consistent renormalizable theory of quantum gravity, they lead to several pathologies. We clearly show that even if they are written as the Planck-suppressed operators they lead to serious consequences and and de Sitter or radiation-dominated Universe is highly unstable. We show that the couplings of these higher derivative curvatures must satisfy $\left|a_{1,2,3}\right|\gtrsim 10^{118}$ to be consistent with the cosmological observations. Thus, the standard effective field theories of quantum gravity fail to describe the observed Universe unless introducing a specific technique dealing with the higher derivative curvature terms.

Pion-Induced Radiative Corrections to Neutron β Decay.

We compute the electromagnetic corrections to neutron β decay using a low-energy hadronic effective field theory. We identify new radiative corrections arising from virtual pions that were missed in previous studies. The largest correction is a percent-level shift in the axial charge of the nucleon proportional to the electromagnetic part of the pion-mass splitting. Smaller corrections, comparable to anticipated experimental precision, impact the β-ν angular correlations and the β asymmetry. We comment on implications of our results for the comparison of the experimentally measured nucleon axial charge with first-principles computations using lattice QCD and on the potential of β decay experiments to constrain beyond-the-standard-model interactions.

Low energy effective theory for axion strings

We consider aspects of the low energy (classical) effective field theory description of global cosmic strings. In the non-relativistic limit, we study the extent to which these are described by the combination of the Nambu-Gotto and Kalb-Ramond actions. While in a formal sense this is the case for infinitely long strings, for more realistic situations, the collective coordinates of the system do not provide a complete description for more than brief intervals; as time evolves it becomes necessary to include low momentum goldstone excitations as well.

Effects of many-body interactions in hypernuclei with Korea-IBS-Daegu-SKKU functionals

We investigate the properties of $$\Lambda $$ hyperon in $$\Lambda $$ -hypernuclei using an effective nuclear density functional theory which is based on the low-energy effective field theory. It expands the energy density in the power of Fermi momentum, and consequently has multiple density dependence for the effective many-body interactions. Starting from the effective density functional for nucleons, we determine the parameters for the two- and many-body $$\Lambda $$ -N interactions added to the nucleon energy density functional by fitting to $$\Lambda $$ -hypernuclear data. The experimental data consist of the energy levels of a $$\Lambda $$ hyperon in the p-, and d-states as well as s-state of $$\Lambda $$ -hypernuclei in the mass range from $${}_\Lambda ^{16}\hbox {O}$$ to $${}_\Lambda ^{208}\hbox {Pb}$$ . The results turn out to properly explain the data relevant to hypernuclei owing to the effective many-body interaction apart from a few data in light hypernuclei. This hyperon functional is applied to study the $$\Lambda $$ hyperon binding energy of the neutron-rich $$^{124-136}_{\Lambda } \hbox {Sn}$$ isotopes which are under consideration for the measurement at J-PARC. Our results are shown to be insensitive to the density dependence of symmetry energy. We also examine the nuclear matter including $$\Lambda $$ hyperon. We note that the hyperon threshold density depends on the nuclear matter properties.

A note on the analytic structure of celestial amplitudes

Celestial amplitudes, obtained by applying Mellin transform and analytic continuation on “ordinary” amplitudes, have interesting properties which may provide useful insights on the underlying theory. Their analytic structures are thus of great interest and need to be better understood. In this paper, we critically examine the analytic structure of celestial amplitudes in a massless low-energy effective field theory. We find that, fixed-order loop contributions, which generate multipoles on the negative β-plane, in general do not provide an accurate description of the analytic structure of celestial amplitudes. By resumming over the leading logarithmic contributions using renormalization group equations (RGEs), we observe much richer analytic structures, which generally contain branch cuts. It is also possible to generate multipoles or shifted single poles if the RGEs satisfy certain relations. Including sub-leading logarithmic contributions is expected to introduce additional corrections to the picture. However, without a new approach, it is difficult to make a general statement since the analytic form of the Mellin transform is challenging to obtain.

Quantum wires, Chern-Simons theory, and dualities in the quantum Hall system

Over the years, many theoretical frameworks have been developed to understand the remarkable physics of the quantum Hall system. In this work we discuss the interplay among quantum wires, Chern-Simons theory, bosonization, and particle-vortex duality, which enable a unified approach for the Laughlin states of the fractional quantum Hall system. Starting from the so-called quantum wires system, which is a semi-microscopic description in terms of 1+1 dimensional theories, we discuss the emergence of 2+1 dimensional low-energy effective field theories by using different maps connecting the microscopic degrees of freedom with the macroscopic ones. We show the origin of these maps by embedding the bosonized version of the original quantum wires model in a gauge invariant theory and using particle vortex-duality.

B¯→D(*)ℓX¯ decays in effective field theory with massive right-handed neutrinos

We calculate the complete differential decay distributions for the $B$ meson decays, $\bar B \to D^{(*)} \ell \bar{X}$, to a massive right-handed (RH) neutrino in the low-energy effective field theory (LEFT) framework. We find that a massive RH neutrino does not introduce any new angular structures compared to the massless case, but can cause significant distortions in angular observables. We study the phenomenology of low-energy four-fermion operators permitted by the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) extended with RH neutrinos (SMNEFT). We show that to explain the positive value of the difference in forward-backward asymmetries, $\Delta A_{\text{FB}}\equiv A_{\text{FB}}^\mu-A_{\text{FB}}^e$, tentatively inferred from Belle data, the RH neutrino must be massive. We also make predictions for $q^2$ dependent angular observables to motivate future measurements.

Extension of thermodynamics of the Kerr–Sen black hole under general uncertainty principle along with first-order corrected entropy

A four-dimensional solution of the classical equation of motion in the low-energy effective field theory for heterotic string theory is chosen. Popularly, this is known as Kerr–Sen black hole. Thermodynamic picture for this particular black hole is constructed. Applying the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP), the first-order correction of it in connection with the thermal heat capacity (THC) and due to conformal field theory (CFT) background are studied. All the cases are pointing towards an unstable thermodynamic phase of the concerned black holes. Phase transitions are located by studying where signs of the heat capacity are changing. Unlike the black holes embedded in AdS space, first-order corrected entropy is found to be unphysical. Photons by tunneling rate are calculated. A comparative study of the effect of generalized uncertainty principle parameter [Formula: see text] along with the black holes’ parameters on the thermodynamics of the black hole is presented.

Zero sound and plasmon modes for non-Fermi liquids

We derive the quantum Boltzmann equation (QBE) by using generalized Landau-interaction parameters, obtained through the nonequilibrium Green's function technique. This is a generalization of the usual QBE formalism to non-Fermi liquid (NFL) systems, which do not have well-defined quasiparticles. We apply this framework to a controlled low-energy effective field theory for the Ising-nematic quantum critical point, in order to find the collective excitations of the critical Fermi surface in the collisionless regime. We also compute the nature of the dispersion after the addition of weak Coulomb interactions. The zero angular momentum longitudinal vibrations of the Fermi surface show a linear-in-wavenumber dispersion, which corresponds to the zero sound of Landau's Fermi liquid theory. The Coulomb interaction modifies it to a plasmon mode in the long-wavelength limit, which disperses as the square-root of the wavenumber. Remarkably, our results show that the zero sound and plasmon modes exhibit the same behaviour as in a Fermi liquid, although an NFL is fundamentally different from the former.