Massless Scalars Research Articles

Quasinormal modes and holographic correlators in a crunching AdS geometry

We calculate frequency space holographic correlators in an asymptotically AdS crunching background, dual to a relevant deformation of the M2-brane CFT placed in de Sitter spacetime. For massless bulk scalars, exploiting the connection to a solvable supersymmetric quantum mechanical problem, we obtain the exact frequency space correlator for the dual operator in the deformed CFT. Controlling the shape of the crunching surface in the Penrose diagram by smoothly dialling the deformation from zero to infinity, we observe that in the large deformation limit the Penrose diagram becomes a `square', and the exact holographic correlators display striking similarities to their counterparts in the BTZ black hole and its higher dimensional generalisations. We numerically determine quasinormal poles for relevant and irrelevant operators, and find an intricate pattern of these in the complex frequency plane. In the case of relevant operators, the deformation parameter has an infinite sequence of critical values, each one characterised by a pair of poles colliding and moving away from the imaginary frequency axis with increasing deformation. In the limit of infinite deformation all scalar operators have identical quasinormal spectra. We compare and contrast our strongly coupled de Sitter QFT results with strongly coupled thermal correlators from AdS black holes.

Scalar scattering via conformal higher spin exchange

Theories containing infinite number of higher spin fields require a particular definition of summation over spins consistent with their underlying symmetries. We consider a model of massless scalars interacting (via bilinear conserved currents) with conformal higher spin fields in flat space. We compute the tree-level four-scalar scattering amplitude using a natural prescription for summation over an infinite set of conformal higher spin exchanges and find that it vanishes (modulo delta-function terms having support on measure-zero domain in phase space). Independently, we show that this vanishing of the scalar scattering amplitude is, in fact, implied by the global conformal higher spin symmetry of this model. We also discuss one-loop corrections to the four-scalar scattering amplitude.

Semiclassical solutions of generalized Wheeler-DeWitt cosmology

We consider an extension of WDW minisuperpace cosmology with additional interaction terms that preserve the linear structure of the theory. General perturbative methods are developed and applied to known semiclassical solutions for a closed Universe filled with a massless scalar. The exact Feynman propagator of the free theory is derived by means of a conformal transformation in minisuperspace. As an example, a stochastic interaction term is considered and first order perturbative corrections are computed. It is argued that such an interaction can be used to describe the interaction of the cosmological background with the microscopic d.o.f. of the gravitational field. A Helmoltz-like equation is considered for the case of interactions that do not depend on the internal time and the corresponding Green's kernel is obtained exactly.The possibility of linking this approach to fundamental theories of Quantum Gravity is investigated.

Classes of stable initial data for massless and massive scalars in Anti-de Sitter spacetime

Since horizon formation in global anti-de Sitter spacetime is dual to thermalization of a conformal field theory on a compact space, whether generic initial data is stable or unstable against gravitational collapse is of great interest. We argue that all the known stable initial data for massless scalars are dominated by single scalar eigenmodes, specifically providing strong numerical evidence consistent with the interpretation that initial data with equal energies in two modes collapse on time scales of order the inverse square of the amplitude. We further scan the parameter space for massive scalar field initial data and present evidence for a novel class of stable or quasi-stable solutions for massive scalars with energy spread through several eigenmodes.

Supersymmetry restoration in superstring perturbation theory

Superstring perturbation theory based on the 1PI effective theory approach has been useful for addressing the problem of mass renormalization and vacuum shift. We derive Ward identities associated with space-time supersymmetry transformation in this approach. This leads to a proof of the equality of renormalized masses of bosons and fermions and identities relating fermionic amplitudes to bosonic amplitudes after taking into account the effect of mass renormalization. This also relates unbroken supersymmetry to a given order in perturbation theory to absence of tadpoles of massless scalars to higher order. The results are valid at the perturbative vacuum as well as in the shifted vacuum when the latter describes the correct ground state of the theory. We apply this to SO(32) heterotic string theory on Calabi-Yau 3-folds where a one loop Fayet-Iliopoulos term apparently breaks supersymmetry at one loop, but analysis of the low energy effective field theory indicates that there is a nearby vacuum where supersymmetry is restored. We explicitly prove that the perturbative amplitudes of this theory around the shifted vacuum indeed satisfy the Ward identities associated with unbroken supersymmetry. We also test the general arguments by explicitly verifying the equality of bosonic and fermionic masses at one loop order in the shifted vacuum, and the appearance of two loop dilaton tadpole in the perturbative vacuum where supersymmetry is expected to be broken.

Vacuum densities for a brane intersecting the AdS boundary

We investigate the Wightman function, the bulk-to-boundary propagator, the mean field squared, and the vacuum expectation values of energy-momentum tensor for a scalar field in anti--de Sitter (AdS) spacetime, in the presence of a brane perpendicular to the AdS boundary. On the brane the field operator obeys the Robin boundary condition. The vacuum expectation values are decomposed into the boundary-free AdS and brane-induced contributions. In this way, for points away from the brane, the renormalization is reduced to the one in pure AdS spacetime. It is shown that at proper distances from the brane larger than the AdS curvature radius the brane-induced expectation values decay as power law for both massless and massive scalars. This behavior is in contrast to that for a plane boundary in Minkowski spacetime, with an exponential decay for massive fields. For Robin boundary conditions different from Dirichlet and Neumann ones, the brane-induced part in the energy density is positive near the brane and negative at large distances. For the Dirichlet/Neumann boundary condition the corresponding energy density is negative/positive everywhere. We show that, for a fixed value of the proper distance from the brane, near the AdS boundary, the Neumann boundary condition is an ``attractor'' in the general class of Robin boundary conditions, whereas the Dirichlet boundary condition is an attractor near the horizon.

Dual localized objects from m-branes over

We consider a few ansatzs for the four and seven forms of 11-dimensional (11D) supergravity over while trying to keep the geometry unchanged. From the 4-form equations, we arrive at some massless scalars and pseudoscalars in the bulk of Euclidean that match with some boundary operators. Indeed, the main objects are instantons and domain walls as the fully and partially localized objects in the external space, respectively. The latter comes from an (anti)M5-brane wrapping partly around three internal directions similar to the fuzzy solutions. Except for the first solutions of adding some anti-M2-branes (M2-branes) to the original M2-branes, the objects backreact on the geometry although (break all supersymmetries and destabilize the vacua). The dual 3-dimensional field theory solutions are obtained by the skew-whiffing and for the scalars and pseudoscalars respectively, while the gauge fields are used mainly for the cases where the R-symmetry and supersymmetry are enhanced as and respectively, and also for pseudoscalars. Further, for the pseudoscalars we propose a special boundary deformation, with a fermion field, that is equivalent to a multi-trace deformation already studied for the bulk conformally coupled pseudoscalar.

Bel–Robinson as stress-tensor gradients and their extensions to massive matter

We show that the Bel–Robinson (BR) tensor is—generically, as well as in its original GR setting—an autonomously conserved part of the, manifestly conserved, double gradient of a system’s stress-tensor. This suggests its natural extension from GR to matter models, first to (known) massless scalars and vectors, then to massive ones, including tensors. These massive versions are to be expected, given that they arise upon KK reduction of massless D+1D+1 ones. We exhibit the resulting spin (0,1,2)(0,1,2) “massive” BR.

Boltzmann hierarchy for interacting neutrinos I: formalism

Starting from the collisional Boltzmann equation, we derive for the first time and from first principles the Boltzmann hierarchy for neutrinos including interactions with a scalar particle. Such interactions appear, for example, in majoron-like models of neutrino mass generation. We study two limits of the scalar mass: (i) An extremely massive scalar whose only role is to mediate an effective 4-fermion neutrino-neutrino interaction, and (ii) a massless scalar that can be produced in abundance and thus demands its own Boltzmann hierarchy. In contrast to, e.g., the first-order Boltzmann hierarchy for Thomson-scattering photons, our interacting neutrino/scalar Boltzmann hierarchies contain additional momentum-dependent collision terms arising from a non-negligible energy transfer in the neutrino-neutrino and neutrino-scalar interactions. This necessitates that we track each momentum mode of the phase space distributions individually, even if the particles were massless. Comparing our hierarchy with the commonly used (ceff2,cvis2)-parameterisation, we find no formal correspondence between the two approaches, which raises the question of whether the latter parameterisation even has an interpretation in terms of particle scattering. Lastly, although we have invoked majoron-like models as a motivation for our study, our treatment is in fact generally applicable to all scenarios in which the neutrino and/or other ultrarelativistic fermions interact with scalar particles.

Matter quantum corrections to the graviton self-energy and the Newtonian potential

We revisit the calculation of matter quantum effects on the graviton self-energy on a flat Minkowski background, with the aim to acquire a deeper understanding of the mechanism that renders the graviton massless. To this end, we derive a low-energy theorem which directly relates the radiative corrections of the cosmological constant to those of the graviton mass to all orders in perturbation theory. As an illustrative example, we consider an Abelian Higgs model with minimal coupling to gravity and show explicitly how a suitable renormalization of the cosmological constant leads to the vanishing of the graviton mass at the one-loop level. In the same Abelian Higgs model, we also calculate the matter quantum corrections to the Newtonian potential and present analytical formulae in terms of modified Bessel and Struve functions of the particle masses in the loop. We show that the correction to the Newtonian potential exhibits an exponential fall-off dependence on the distance $r$, once the non-relativistic limit with respect to the non-zero loop mass is carefully considered. For massless scalars, fermions and gauge bosons in the loops, we recover the well-known results presented in the literature.

Fermions and the scattering equations

This paper investigates how tree-level amplitudes with massless quarks, gluons and/or massless scalars transforming under a single copy of the gauge group can be expressed in the context of the scattering equations as a sum over the inequivalent solutions of the scattering equations. In the case where the amplitudes satisfy cyclic invariance, KK- and BCJ-relations the only modification is the generalisation of the permutation invariant function E(z, p, e). We present a method to compute the modified E(z, p, e). The most important examples are tree amplitudes in $$ \mathcal{N}=4 $$ SYM and QCD amplitudes with one quark-antiquark pair and an arbitrary number of gluons. QCD amplitudes with two or more quark-antiquark pairs do not satisfy the BCJ-relations and require in addition a generalisation of the Parke-Taylor factors C σ(z). The simplest case of the QCD tree-level four-point amplitude with two quark-antiquark pairs is discussed explicitly.

Bending of light in quantum gravity.

We consider the scattering of lightlike matter in the presence of a heavy scalar object (such as the Sun or a Schwarzschild black hole). By treating general relativity as an effective field theory we directly compute the nonanalytic components of the one-loop gravitational amplitude for the scattering of massless scalars or photons from an external massive scalar field. These results allow a semiclassical computation of the bending angle for light rays grazing the Sun, including long-range ℏ contributions. We discuss implications of this computation, in particular, the violation of some classical formulations of the equivalence principle.

Inequivalence of coset constructions for spacetime symmetries

Non-linear realizations of spacetime symmetries can be obtained by a generalization of the coset construction valid for internal ones. The physical equivalence of different representations for spacetime symmetries is not obvious, since their relation involves not only a redefinition of the fields but also a field-dependent change of coordinates. A simple and relevant spacetime symmetry is obtained by the contraction of the 4D conformal group that leads to the Galileon group. We analyze two non-linear realizations of this group, focusing in particular on the propagation of signals around non-trivial backgrounds. The aperture of the lightcone is in general different in the two representations and in particular a free (luminal) massless scalar is mapped in a Galileon theory which admits superluminal propagation. We show that in this theory, if we consider backgrounds that vanish at infinity, there is no asymptotic effect: the displacement of the trajectory integrates to zero, as can be expected since the S-matrix is trivial. Regarding local measurements, we show that the puzzle is solved taking into account that a local coupling with fixed sources in one theory is mapped into a non-local coupling and we show that this effect compensates the different lightcone. Therefore the two theories have a different notion of locality. The same applies to the different non-linear realizations of the conformal group and we study the particular case of a cosmologically interesting background: the Galilean Genesis scenarios.

Resonance scattering and the passage to bound states in the field of near-black-hole objects

In this paper, we examine the spectrum of a massive scalar particle interacting with the strong gravitational field of a static, spherically symmetric object which is not quite massive enough to be a black hole. As was found in the case of massless particles, there exists a dense spectrum of long lived resonances (meta-stable states), which leads to an energy-averaged cross-section for particle capture which approaches the absorption cross-section for a Schwarzschild black hole. However, the generalization to nonzero mass introduces new phenomena, along with important qualitative changes to the scattering properties. In contrast to the massless case, there exists a spectrum of bound states with almost identical structure to that of the resonances, allowing for the possibility of radiative transitions and particle capture. The resonance lifetimes for elastic processes are parametrically larger than for massless particles, meaning the absorption cross-section approaches the black hole case faster than for massless scalars.

CriticalO(N)models in6−εdimensions

We revisit the classic $O(N)$ symmetric scalar field theories in $d$ dimensions with interaction $(\phi^i \phi^i)^2$. For $2<d<4$ these theories flow to the Wilson-Fisher fixed points for any $N$. A standard large $N$ Hubbard-Stratonovich approach also indicates that, for $4<d<6$, these theories possess unitary UV fixed points. We propose their alternate description in terms of a theory of $N+1$ massless scalars with the cubic interactions $\sigma \phi^i \phi^i$ and $\sigma^3$. Our one-loop calculation in $6-\epsilon$ dimensions shows that this theory has an IR stable fixed point at real values of the coupling constants for $N>1038$. We show that the $1/N$ expansions of various operator scaling dimensions match the known results for the critical $O(N)$ theory continued to $d=6-\epsilon$. These results suggest that, for sufficiently large $N$, there are 5-dimensional unitary $O(N)$ symmetric interacting CFT's; they should be dual to the Vasiliev higher-spin theory in AdS$_6$ with alternate boundary conditions for the bulk scalar. Using these CFT's we provide a new test of the 5-dimensional $F$-theorem, and also find a new counterexample for the $C_T$ theorem.

Geometrical hierarchies in classical supergravity.

We introduce a N=1 supergravity model with a very simple hidden sector coupled to the electroweak gauge and Higgs sectors of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. At the classical level, supersymmetry and SU(2)×U(1) are both spontaneously broken, with vanishing vacuum energy. Two real flat directions control the two symmetry-breaking scales m(3/2) and m(Z). The two massless scalars are a gauge singlet and the standard Higgs boson. All other unobserved particles have masses of order m(3/2). This may be a new starting point for studying the compatibility of naturalness with the observed mass hierarchies.

Integral representations combining ladders and crossed-ladders

We use the worldline formalism to derive integral representations for three classes of amplitudes in scalar field theory: (i) the scalar propagator exchanging N momenta with a scalar background field (ii) the "half-ladder" with N rungs in x - space (iii) the four-point ladder with N rungs in x - space as well as in (off-shell) momentum space. In each case we give a compact expression combining the N! Feynman diagrams contributing to the amplitude. As our main application, we reconsider the well-known case of two massive scalars interacting through the exchange of a massless scalar. Applying asymptotic estimates and a saddle-point approximation to the N-rung ladder plus crossed ladder diagrams, we derive a semi-analytic approximation formula for the lowest bound state mass in this model.

Yang-Mills theories with an arbitrary number of compactified extra dimensions

The well-known Yang-Mills theory with one $ S^{1} / Z_{2}$ universal extra dimension (UED) is generalized to an arbitrary number of spatial extra dimensions through a novel compactification scheme. In this paper, the Riemannian flat based manifold under consideration contains $ n $ spatial extra dimensions defined by $ n $ copies of the orbifold $ S^{1} / Z_{2}$. In this approach, we present the gauge structure and the mass spectrum of the effective four-dimensional theory. We introduce the concept of standard and nonstandard gauge transformations of the effective theory, and explicitly identify the emergence of massive vector fields in the same number as massless ('pseudo-Goldstone') scalars in the compactified theory, verifying that a Higgs-like mechanism operates in the compactification process. It is found that, in contrast with the one UED scenario, in cases with two or more UEDs there emerge massive scalar fields. Besides, at phase-space level, the Hamiltonian analysis yields that the higher-dimensional and compactified theories are classically equivalent using the fundamental concept of canonical transformation. This work lays the ground for a wider study on these theories concerning their quantization and predictive power at the level of quantum fluctuations.

Charge transport in holography with momentum dissipation

In this work, we examine how charge is transported in a theory where momentum is relaxed by spatially dependent, massless scalars. We analyze the possible IR phases in terms of various scaling exponents and the (ir)relevance of operators in the IR effective holographic theory with a dilaton. We compute the (finite) resistivity and encounter broad families of (in)coherent metals and insulators, characterized by universal scaling behaviour. The optical conductivity at zero temperature and low frequencies exhibits power tails which can violate scaling symmetries, due to the running of the dilaton. At low temperatures, our model captures features of random-field disorder.

Finite temperature Casimir effect for charged massless scalars in a magnetic field

The zeta function regularization technique is used to study the finite temperature Casimir effect for a charged and massless scalar field confined between parallel plates and satisfying Dirichlet boundary conditions at the plates. A magnetic field perpendicular to the plates is included. Three equivalent expressions for the zeta function are obtained, which are exact to all orders in the magnetic field strength, temperature and plate distance. These expressions of the zeta function are used to calculate the Helmholtz free energy of the scalar field and the pressure on the plates, in the case of high temperature, small plate distance and strong magnetic field. In all cases, simple analytic expressions are obtained for the free energy and pressure which are accurate and valid for practically all values of temperature, plate distance and magnetic field.