Massive Propagator Research Articles

AlgRel.wl: Algebraic relations for the product of propagators in Feynman integrals

Motivated by the foundational work of Tarasov, who pointed out that the algebraic relations of the type considered here can lead to functional reduction of Feynman integrals, we suitably modify the original method to be able to implement and automatize it and present a Mathematica package AlgRel.wl. The purpose of this package is to help derive the algebraic relations with arbitrary kinematic quantities, for the product of propagators. Under specific choices of the arbitrary parameters that appear in these relations, we can write the original integral with all massive propagators in general, as a sum of integrals which have fewer massive propagators. The resulting integrals are of reduced complexity for computational purposes. For the one-loop cases, with all different and non-zero masses, this would result in integrals with one massive propagator. We also devise a strategy so that the method can also be applied to higher-loop integrals. We demonstrate the procedure and the results obtained using the package for various one-loop and higher-loop examples. Due to the fact that the Feynman integrals are intimately related to the hypergeometric functions, a useful consequence of these algebraic relations is in deriving the sets of non-trivial reduction formulae. We present various such reduction formulae and further discuss how, more such formulae can be obtained apart from the ones described here. The AlgRel.wl package and an example notebook Examples.nb can be found at GitHub.

Evaluating master integrals in non-factorizable corrections to t-channel single-top production at NNLO QCD

We studied the two-loop non-factorizable Feynman diagrams for the t-channel single-top production process in quantum chromodynamics. We present a systematic computation of master integrals of the two-loop Feynman diagrams with one internal massive propagator in which a complete uniform transcendental basis can be built. The master integrals are derived by means of canonical differential equations and uniform transcendental integrals. The results are expressed in the form of Goncharov polylogarithm functions, whose variables are the scalar products of external momenta, as well as the masses of the top quark and the W boson. We also gave a discussion on the diagrams with potential elliptic sectors.

Two-loop master integrals for a planar and a non-planar topology relevant for single top production

We provide analytic results for two-loop four-point master integrals with one massive propagator and one massive leg relevant to single top production. Canonical bases of master integrals are constructed and the Simplified Differential Equations approach is employed for their analytic solution. The necessary boundary terms are computed in closed form in the dimensional regulator, allowing us to obtain analytic results in terms of multiple polylogarithms of arbitrary transcendental weight. We provide explicit solutions of all two-loop master integrals up to transcendental weight six and discuss their numerical evaluation for Euclidean and physical phase-space points.

A correspondence between the free and interacting field

We discover a correspondence between the free field and the interacting states. This correspondence is firstly given from the fact that the free propagator can be converted into a tower of propagators for massive states, when expanded with the Hermite function basis. The equivalence of propagators reveals that in this particular case the duality can naturally be regarded as the equivalence of one theory on the plane wave basis to the other on the Hermite function basis. More generally, the Hermite function basis provides an alternative quantization process with the creation/annihilation operators that correspond directly to the interacting fields. As an illustration, we apply this basis to the 3+1 dimensional Yang–Mills theory, where the three-dimensional space being reduced through the Hermite function basis, and an auxiliary parameter omega denotes for string tension. At large omega limit, with then considering only the lowest order Hermite function (Lowest Landau Level), the equivalent action becomes the Banks–Fischler–Shenker–Susskind (BFSS) matrix model. At small omega limit, the perturbative series summed over all orders of Hermite function gives a massive gluon propagator.

Two-loop master integrals for a planar topology contributing to pp → toverline{t}j

We consider the case of a two-loop five-point pentagon-box integral configuration with one internal massive propagator that contributes to top-quark pair production in association with a jet at hadron colliders. We construct the system of differential equations for all the master integrals in a canonical form where the analytic form is reconstructed from numerical evaluations over finite fields. We find that the system can be represented as a sum of d-logarithmic forms using an alphabet of 71 letters. Using high precision boundary values obtained via the auxiliary mass flow method, a numerical solution to the master integrals is provided using generalised power series expansions.

Gravitational wave signals in an Unruh–DeWitt detector

We firstly generalize the massive scalar propagator for planar gravitational waves propagating on Minkowski space obtained recently in van Haasteren and Prokopec (2022 arXiv:2204.12930 [gr-qc]). We then use this propagator to study the response of a freely falling Unruh–DeWitt detector to a gravitational wave background. We find that a freely falling detector completely cancels the effect of the deformation of the invariant distance induced by the gravitational waves, such that the only effect comes from an increased average size of scalar field vacuum fluctuations, the origin of which can be traced back to the change of the surface in which the gravitational waves fluctuate. The effect originates from the quantum interference between propagation on off-shell detector’s trajectories which probe different spatial gravitational potential induced by the gravitational backreaction from gravitational waves, and it is therefore purely quantum. When resummed over classical graviton insertions, gravitational waves generate cuts on the imaginary axis of the complex -plane (where denotes the difference of proper times), and the discontinuity across these cuts is responsible for a continuum of energy transitions induced in the Unruh–DeWitt detector. Not surprisingly, we find that the detector’s transition rate is exponentially suppressed with increasing energy and the mass of the scalar field. What is surprising, however, is that the transition rate is a non-analytic function of the gravitational field strain. This means that, no matter how small is the gravitational field amplitude, expanding in powers of the gravitational field strain cannot approximate well the detector’s transition rate. We present numerical and approximate analytical results for the detector’s transition rate both for circularly polarized and for polarized monochromatic, unidirectional, gravitational waves.

Reheating with effective potentials

We consider reheating for a charged inflaton which is minimally coupled toelectromagnetism. The evolution of such an inflaton induces a time-dependentmass for the photon. We show how the massive photon propagator can beexpressed as a spatial Fourier mode sum involving three different sorts ofmode functions, just like the constant mass case. We develop accurateanalytic approximations for these mode functions, and use them to approximatethe effective force exerted on the inflaton 0-mode. This effective forceallows one to simply compute the evolution of the inflaton 0-mode and tofollow the progress of reheating.

Gravitational radiation from binary systems in massive graviton theories

Theories with massive gravitons have peculiarity called the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity in that the massive theory propagator does not go to the massless graviton propagator in the zero graviton mass limit. This results in large deviation in Newtons law for massive graviton theories even when the graviton mass vanishes. We test the vDVZ in massive graviton theories for single graviton vertex process namely the gravitational radiation from a classical source.We calculate the gravitational radiation from compact binaries using the perturbative Feynman diagram method. We perform this calculation for Einstein's gravity with massless gravitons and verify that the Feynman diagram calculation reproduces the quadrupole formula. Using the same procedure we calculate the gravitational radiation for three massive graviton theories: (1) the Fierz-Pauli theory (2) the modified Fierz-Pauli theory without the vDVZ discontinuity and (3) the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati theory with a momentum dependent graviton mass. We put limits on the graviton mass in each of these theories from observations of binary pulsar timings.

Massive gluons in Curci-Ferrari model for describing infrared QCD

At large energy quarks and gluons behave as free particles and therefore the standard perturbative analysis of QCD gives very good results. However, this is not the situation in the low energy regime of QCD which is generally treated with nonperturbative methods. In spite of this, lattice simulations observe that the expansion parameter is not large in the gluonic sector. In particular, the coupling constant do not reach a Landau pole in the infrared as it is expected by standard perturbation theory. On top of this, lattice simulations find that the gluon propagator behaves as a massive propagator in the infrared. Motivated by these observations we use a model that includes a mass for the gluon (Curci-Ferrari) that can reproduce the same kind of behaviour for the gluon propagator and also a similar expansion parameter as the one found by the lattice. In this proceeding we show some of the results of quenched correlation functions obtained by using that small parameter for computing one and two loops corrections. At the end, we compare them with lattice data obtaining very good results.

Analytic two-loop master integrals for tW production at hadron colliders: I * *Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11805042, 12005117, 12175048), Taishan Scholar Foundation of Shandong province (tsqn201909011)

We present the analytic calculation of two-loop master integrals that are relevant for tW production at hadron colliders. We focus on the integral families with only one massive propagator. After selecting a canonical basis, the differential equations for the master integrals can be transformed into the d ln form. The boundaries are determined by simple direct integrations or regularity conditions at kinematic points without physical singularities. The analytical results in this work are expressed in terms of multiple polylogarithms, and have been checked via numerical computations.

Chiral susceptibility in a dense thermomagnetic QCD medium within the hard thermal loop approximation

We have computed the chiral susceptibility in quark-gluon plasma in presence of finite chemical potential and weak magnetic field within hard thermal loop approximation. First we construct the massive effective quark propagator in a thermomagnetic medium. Then we obtain completely analytic expression for the chiral susceptibility in weak magnetic field approximation. In the absence of magnetic field the thermal chiral susceptibility increases in presence of finite chemical potential. The effect of thermomagnetic correction is found to be very marginal as temperature is the dominant scale in weak field approximation.

Massive photon propagator in the presence of axionic fluctuations

The theory of massive photons in the presence of axions is studied as the effective theory describing the electromagnetic response of semimetals when a particular quartic fermionic pairing perturbation triggers the formation of charged chiral condensates, giving rise to an axionic superconductor. We investigate corrections to the Yukawa-like potential mediated by massive photons due to axion excitations up to one-loop order and compute the modifications of the London penetration length.

Podolsky propagator in the gap and bound-state equations

Based on the Generalized Quantum Electrodynamics expression for the Podolsky propagator, which preserves gauge invariance for massive photons, we propose a model for the massive gluon propagator that reproduces well-known features of established strong-interaction models in the framework of the Dyson-Schwinger equation. By adjusting the Podolsky mass and the coupling strength we thus construct a model with simple analytical properties known from perturbative theory, yet well suited to describe a confining interaction. We obtain solutions of the Dyson-Schwinger equation for the quark at space-like momenta on the real axis as well as on the complex plane and solving the bound-state problem with the Bethe-Salpeter equation yields masses and weak decay constants of the $\pi, K$ and $\eta_c$ in excellent agreement with experimental values, while the $D$ and $D_s$ are reasonably well described. The analytical simplicity of this effective interaction has the potential to be useful for phenomenological applications and may facilitate calculations in Minkowski space.

Charged massive vector boson propagator in a constant magnetic field in arbitrary ξ -gauge obtained using the modified Fock-Schwinger method

We applied a recently published modified Fock-Schwinger (MFS) method to find the exact solution of the propagator equation for a charged vector boson in the presence of a constant magnetic field directly in the momentum space as a sum over Landau levels in arbitrary $\xi$-gauge. In contrast to the standard approaches for finding propagators, MFS method demonstrated several improvements in terms of computational complexity reduction and revealed simple internal structures in intermediate and final expressions, thus allowing to obtain new useful representations of the propagator.

Inflaton effective potential for general ε

We develop an analytic approximation for the coincidence limit of a massive scalar propagator in an arbitrary spatially flat, homogeneous and isotropic geometry. We employ this to compute the one loop corrections to the inflaton effective potential from a quadratic coupling to a minimally coupled scalar. We also extend the Friedmann equations to cover potentials that depend locally on the Hubble parameter and the first slow roll parameter.

Localized rainbows in the QCD phase diagram

We study the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter with light quarks using a recently proposed, small parameter approach to infrared QCD in the Landau gauge. This is based on an expansion with respect to both the inverse number of colors and the pure Yang-Mills coupling in the presence of a Curci-Ferrari mass term. At leading order, this leads to the well-known rainbow equation for the quark propagator with a massive gluon propagator. We solve the latter at nonzero temperature and chemical potential using a simple semi-analytic approximation known to capture the essence of chiral symmetry breaking in the vacuum. In the chiral limit, we find a tricritical point which becomes a critical endpoint in the presence of a nonzero bare quark mass, in agreement with the results of nonperturbative functional methods and model calculations. This supports the view that the present approach allows for a systematic study of the QCD phase diagram in a controlled expansion scheme.

Non-local scalar field on deSitter and its infrared behaviour

We investigate free non-local massless and massive scalar field on deSitter (dS) space-time. We compute the propagator for the non-local scalar field for the corresponding theories on flat and deSitter space-times. It is seen that for the non-local theory, the massless limit of massive propagator is smooth for both flat and deSitter. Moreover, this limit matches exactly with the massless propagator of the non-local scalar field for both flat and deSitter space-time. The propagator is seen to respect dS invariance. Furthermore, investigations of the non-local Green's function on deSitter for large time-like separation shows that the propagator has no infrared divergences. The dangerous infrared log-divergent contributions which arise is local massless theories are absent in the corresponding non-local version. Lack of infrared divergences in the propagator hints at the strong role non-localities may play in the dS infrared physics. This study suggests that non-locality can cure IR issues in deSitter.

Infrared massive gluon propagator from a BRST-invariant Gribov horizon in a family of covariant gauges

A distinctive feature observed in lattice simulations of confining nonabelian gauge theories, such as Quantum Chromodynamics, is the presence of a dynamical mass for the gauge field in the low energy regime of the theory. In the Gribov-Zwanziger framework in the Landau gauge, such mass is a consequence of the generation of the dimension two condensates $\langle A_\mu^aA_\mu^a\rangle$ and $\langle \bar\varphi_\mu^{ab}\varphi_\mu^{ab}-\bar\omega_\mu^{ab}\omega_\mu^{ab}\rangle$, where $A$ is the gluon field and the fields $\bar\varphi$, $\varphi$, $\bar\omega$, and $\omega$ are Zwanziger's auxiliary fields. In this work, we show that, in the recently developed BRST-invariant version of the Refined Gribov-Zwanziger theory, these condensates can be introduced in a BRST-invariant way for a family of $R_\xi$ gauges. Their values are explicitly computed to first order and turn out to be independent of the gauge parameters contained in the gauge-fixing condition, as expected from the BRST invariance of the formulation. This fact supports the possibility of a gauge-parameter independent nonzero infrared gluon mass, whose value is the same as the one in the Landau gauge.

Deconfinement phase transition of thermal QED3

Since the dual fermion condensate be used to describe the center symmetry Z, we extend it to thermal ${\mathrm{QED}}_{3}$ and study the deconfinement phase transition by the truncated Dyson-Schwinger equation for the massive fermion propagator at finite temperature. We show that, for a massive fermion, the system first appears as a deconfinement phase transition with the increase of temperature and then the chiral symmetry is restored and the corresponding temperature of the deconfinement phase transition increases with the enlargement of the fermion mass. It should be pointed out here that the results obtained in this paper are not model independent but are heavily dependent on the truncated Dyson-Schwinger equation we have chosen.

Strongly coupled quasi-single field inflation

We study the power spectrum of quasi-single field inflation where strong coupling is considered. The contribution from the massive propagator can be divided into local and non-local contributions. The local one is the leading contribution and is power-law suppressed as a function of mass, while the non-local contribution is exponentially suppressed in the large mass limit. For the local contribution, it is possible to use the effective field theory approach to study the power spectrum in the strongly coupled region of the parameter space. For the non-local contribution, we developed a partial effective field theory method to simplify the calculation: when there are multiple massive propagators, one can fully compute it after integrating out all but one massive propagator by effective field theory. The result retains the “standard clock” signal, which is interesting for probing the expansion history of the primordial universe and the physics of a “cosmological collider”. The error involved compared to the full calculation is power law suppressed by the effective mass of the heavy field.