Massless Fermion Limit Research Articles

The HTL Lagrangian at NLO: The photon case

We calculate the two loop hard correction to the photon self-energy in an electron-positron plasma (EPP) for arbitrary soft momenta. This provides the only missing ingredient to obtain the Hard Thermal Loop (HTL) effective Lagrangian at next-to-leading order (NLO), and the full photon propagator at the same order. This result can be easily extended to obtain the soft photon propagator in a quark gluon plasma. We use the Keldysh representation of the real time formalism in the massless fermion limit, and dimensional regularization (DR) to regulate any ultraviolet (UV), infrared (IR) or collinear divergences that appear in the intermediate steps of the calculation. In the limit of soft photon momenta, our result is finite. It not only provides an O(α) correction to the Debye mass, but also a new non-local structure. A consistent regularization of radial and angular integrals is crucial to get this new structure. As an application we calculate the plasmon dispersion relations at NLO.

Towards consistent Electroweak Precision Data constraints in the SMEFT

We discuss the impact of many previously neglected effects of higher dimensional operators when fitting to Electroweak Precision data (EWPD) in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). We calculate the general case of $2 \rightarrow 2$ fermion scattering in the SMEFT to order $\mathcal{O}(\bar{v}_T^2/\Lambda^2)$ valid on and off the $Z$ pole, in the massless fermion limit. We demonstrate that previously neglected corrections scale as $\Gamma_Z M_Z/\bar{v}_T^2$ in the partial widths extracted from measured cross sections at LEPI, compared to the leading effect of dimension six operators in anomalous $Z$ couplings. Further, constraints on leading effects of anomalous $Z$ couplings are also modified by neglected perturbative corrections and dimension eight operators. We perform a minimal EWPD fit to illustrate the size of the error these corrections induce, when bounding leading effects. These considerations relax bounds compared to a naive leading order analysis, and show that constraints that rise above the percent level are subject to substantial theoretical uncertanties. We also argue that renormalization group running global constraints expressed through $\chi^2$ functions to a common scale, and then minimizing and performing a global fit of all data allows more consistent constraints to be obtained in the SMEFT.

Electroweak corrections to photon scattering, polarization and lensing in a gravitational background and the near horizon limit

We investigate the semiclassical approach to the lensing of photons in a spherically symmetric gravitational background, starting from Born level and include in our analysis the radiative corrections obtained from the electroweak theory for the graviton/photon/photon vertex. In this approach, the cross section is related to the angular variation of the impact parameter ($b$), which is then solved for $b$ as a function of the angle of deflection, and measured in horizon units ($b_h\equiv b/(2 G M)$). Exact numerical solutions for the angular deflection are presented. The numerical analysis shows that perturbation theory in a weak background agrees with the classical Einstein formula for the deflection already at distances of the order of $20$ horizon units ($\sim 20\, b_h$) and it is optimal in the description both of very strong and weak lensings. We show that the electroweak corrections to the cross section are sizeable, becoming very significant for high energy gamma rays. Our analysis covers in energy most of the photon spectrum, from the cosmic microwave background up to very high energy gamma rays, and scatterings with any value of the photon impact parameter. We also study the helicity-flip photon amplitude, which is of $O(\alpha^2)$ in the weak coupling $\alpha$, and its massless fermion limit, which involves the exchange of a conformal anomaly pole. The corresponding cross section is proportional to the Born level result and brings to a simple renormalization of Einsten's formula.

Trace anomaly, massless scalars, and the gravitational coupling of QCD

The anomalous effective action describing the coupling of gravity to a non-abelian gauge theory can be determined by a variational solution of the anomaly equation, as shown by Riegert long ago. It is given by a nonlocal expression, with the nonlocal interaction determined by the Green's function of a conformally covariant operator of fourth order. In recent works it has been shown that this interaction is mediated by a simple pole in an expansion around a Minkowski background, coupled in the infrared in the massless fermion limit. This result relies on the local formulation of the original action in terms of two auxiliary fields, one physical scalar and one ghost, which take the role of massless composite degrees of freedom. In the gravity case, the two scalars have provided ground in favour of some recent proposals of an infrared approach to the solution of the dark energy problem, entirely based on the behaviour of the vacuum energy at the QCD phase transition. As a test of this general result, we perform a complete one-loop computation of the effective action describing the coupling of a non-abelian gauge theory to gravity. We confirm the appearance of an anomaly pole which contributes to the trace part of the $TJJ$ correlator and of extra poles in its trace-free part, in the quark and gluon sectors, describing the coupling of the energy momentum tensor ($T$) to two non abelian gauge currents ($J$).

CONVOLUTION FORMULA AND FINITE W BOSON WIDTH EFFECTS IN TOP QUARK WIDTH

In the Standard Model, the top quark decay width Γt is computed from the exclusive t → bW decay. We argue in favor of using the three body decays [Formula: see text] to compute Γt as a sum over these exclusive modes. As dictated by the S-matrix theory, these three body decays of the top quark involve only asymptotic states and incorporate the width of the W boson resonance in a natural way. The convolution formula commonly used to include the finite width effects is found to be valid, in the general case, when the intermediate resonance couples to a conserved current (limit of massless fermions in the case of W bosons). The relation Γt = Γ(t → bW) is recovered by taking the limit of massless fermions followed by the W boson narrow width approximation. Although both calculations of Γt are different at the formal level, their results would differ only by tiny effects induced by light fermion masses and higher-order radiative corrections.

Non-renormalization of the full correlator at two–loop order

By explicit calculation of the two-loop QCD corrections we show that for singlet axial and vector currents the full off-shell <VVA> correlation function in the limit of massless fermions is proportional to the one-loop result, when calculated in the MS-bar scheme. By the same finite renormalization which is needed to make the one-loop anomaly exact to all orders, we arrive at the conclusion that two-loop corrections are absent altogether, for the complete correlator not only its anomalous part. In accordance with the one-loop nature of the <VVA> correlator, one possible amplitude, which seems to be missing by accident at the one-loop level, also does not show up at the two-loop level.

Non-compact QED 3 coupled to a four-fermi interaction

We present preliminary numerical results for the three dimensional non-compact QED with a weak four-fermion term in the lattice action. Approaches based on Schwinger-Dyson studies, arguments based on thermodynamic inequalities and numerical simulations lead to estimates of the critical number of fermion flavors (below which chiral symmetry is broken) ranging from $N_{fc}=1$ to $N_{fc}=4$. The weak four-fermion coupling provides the framework for an improved algorithm, which allows us to simulate the chiral limit of massless fermions and expose delicate effects.

MASS AND COUPLING CONSTANT LIMITS FROM CONVERGENCE CONDITIONS ON THE EFFECTIVE CHARGE IN QED

The massless fermion limit of QED is discussed. For on-shell renormalization the high energy behavior fixes no lower limit on the mass of the lightest fermion if the fine structure constant α is allowed to vary. The choice of an arbitrary (spacelike) subtraction point does, however, fix a lower limit on the mass of the lightest fermion, for any subtraction scale μ, if the effective charge α eff (μ) respects both quantum mechanical superposition and renormalization scale invariance. Limits on the values of α or the electron mass are obtained within the Standard Electroweak Model by requiring convergence of α eff (MZ).

Supersymmetry and bosonization in three dimensions

We discuss on the possible existence of a supersymmetric invariance in purely fermionic planar systems and its relation to the fermion-boson mapping in three-dimensional quantum field theory. We consider, as a very simple example, the bosonization of free massive fermions and show that, under certain conditions on the masses, this model displays a supersymmetric-like invariance in the low energy regime. We construct the purely fermionic expression for the supercurrent and the non-linear supersymmetry transformation laws. We argue that the supersymmetry is absent in the limit of massless fermions where the bosonized theory is non-local.

Emergence of new quasiparticles in quantum electrodynamics at finite temperature.

We study the spectrum of fermionic excitations in a hot relativistic electron plasma. Numerical analysis of the one-loop electron propagator shows the appearance of new quasiparticle modes, as already studied in the massless fermion limit, as the temperature is raised to exceed the electron mass $m$. We calculate the relevant spectral densities and show that one mode, whose splitting in energy from the original electron is of the order of $m$, moves as the temperature is raised towards higher frequency along with the electron while retaining a narrow width. We compare results derived in Feynman and Coulomb gauges. The role of the zero-temperature counterterms is discussed.

Once more about the axial anomaly pole

Triangle loop diagrams Z→ q q →γγ ∗ are derived in an analytic form and used for studying the axial anomaly pole problem. It is shown that the anomaly pole appears only in the massless fermion limit and only for the real photons.

A CHIRALLY SYMMETRIC EFFECTIVE ACTION FOR VECTOR AND AXIAL VECTOR FIELDS IN A GLOBAL COLOR SYMMETRY MODEL OF QCD

We consider the quantum field theory of a model of an extended Nambu-Jona-Lasinio type with a QCD based nonlocal fermion current-current interaction which has global SU(Nc) symmetry. We obtain an exact bosonization of this model in four Euclidean dimensions using auxiliary bilocal fields and discuss the dynamical breakdown of chiral symmetry in the massless fermion limit. A local field bosonization is obtained by decomposing the bilocal fields in terms of complete orthonormal sets of functions with the expansion coefficients, which are local functions, identified as the local meson fields. Retaining the ground state pseudoscalar, vector and pseudovector local fields we obtain a local effective action for this sector of the theory. The derivative expansion of the fermionic determinant necessary to obtain this local action is self-regularizing because of the bilocal substructure present in the model which is manifest in the form factors that are associated with the local fields. In our local action the value of each coefficient depends critically on the underlying fermionic dynamics through these form factors and the vacuum functions. As a consequence of this the vector and pseudovector fields in the theory are best interpreted as simple fermion-antifermion bound states rather than as massive Yang-Mills fields or exotic composites of the pseudoscalars; interpretations that we find are not in general admitted when models such as the GCM are treated correctly. Identifying then the physical vector and pseudovector fields with the linearly transforming chiral partners introduced by the bosonization, we obtain an effective action for this sector of the meson spectrum which predicts values for the kinematic and dynamic quantities associated with these fields.