scholarly journals TOPOLOGICAL EFFECTIVE FIELD THEORIES FOR DIRAC FERMIONS FROM INDEX THEOREM

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (01) ◽  
pp. 1350193 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIANDOMENICO PALUMBO ◽  
ROBERTO CATENACCI ◽  
ANNALISA MARZUOLI

Dirac fermions have a central role in high energy physics but it is well-known that they emerge also as quasiparticles in several condensed matter systems supporting topological order. We present a general method for deriving the topological effective actions of (3+1)-massless Dirac fermions living on general backgrounds and coupled with vector and axial-vector gauge fields. The first step of our strategy is standard (in the Hermitian case) and consists in connecting the determinants of Dirac operators with the corresponding analytical indices through the zeta-function regularization. Then, we introduce a suitable splitting of the heat kernel that naturally selects the purely topological part of the determinant (i.e., the topological effective action). This topological effective action is expressed in terms of gauge fields using the Atiyah–Singer index theorem which computes the analytical index in topological terms. The main new result of this paper is to provide a consistent extension of this method to the non-Hermitian case, where a well-defined determinant does not exist. Quantum systems supporting relativistic fermions can thus be topologically classified on the basis of their response to the presence of (external or emergent) gauge fields through the corresponding topological effective field theories (TEFTs).

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (05) ◽  
pp. 1641007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Pavón Valderrama

Effective field theories are the most general tool for the description of low energy phenomena. They are universal and systematic: they can be formulated for any low energy systems we can think of and offer a clear guide on how to calculate predictions with reliable error estimates, a feature that is called power counting. These properties can be easily understood in Wilsonian renormalization, in which effective field theories are the low energy renormalization group evolution of a more fundamental — perhaps unknown or unsolvable — high energy theory. In nuclear physics they provide the possibility of a theoretically sound derivation of nuclear forces without having to solve quantum chromodynamics explicitly. However there is the problem of how to organize calculations within nuclear effective field theory: the traditional knowledge about power counting is perturbative but nuclear physics is not. Yet power counting can be derived in Wilsonian renormalization and there is already a fairly good understanding of how to apply these ideas to non-perturbative phenomena and in particular to nuclear physics. Here we review a few of these ideas, explain power counting in two-nucleon scattering and reactions with external probes and hint at how to extend the present analysis beyond the two-body problem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erich Poppitz ◽  
F. David Wandler

Abstract We explicitly calculate the topological terms that arise in IR effective field theories for SU(N) gauge theories on ℝ3 × 𝕊1 by integrating out all but the lightest modes. We then show how these terms match all global-symmetry ’t Hooft anomalies of the UV description. We limit our discussion to theories with abelian 0-form symmetries, namely those with one flavour of adjoint Weyl fermion and one or zero flavours of Dirac fermions. While anomaly matching holds as required, it takes a different form than previously thought. For example, cubic- and mixed-U(1) anomalies are matched by local background-field-dependent topological terms (background TQFTs) instead of chirallagrangian Wess-Zumino terms. We also describe the coupling of 0-form and 1-form symmetry backgrounds in the magnetic dual of super-Yang-Mills theory in a novel way, valid throughout the RG flow and consistent with the monopole-instanton ’t Hooft vertices. We use it to discuss the matching of the mixed chiral-center anomaly in the magnetic dual.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (05) ◽  
pp. 1641001 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Kirscher

The emergence of complex macroscopic phenomena from a small set of parameters and microscopic concepts demonstrates the power and beauty of physical theories. A theory which relates the wealth of data and peculiarities found in nuclei to the small number of parameters and symmetries of quantum chromodynamics is by that standard of exceptional beauty. Decade-long research on computational physics and on effective field theories facilitate the assessment of the presumption that quark masses and strong and electromagnetic coupling constants suffice to parametrize the nuclear chart. By presenting the current status of that enterprise, this article touches the methodology of predicting nuclei by simulating the constituting quarks and gluons and the development of effective field theories as appropriate representations of the fundamental theory. While the nuclear spectra and electromagnetic responses analyzed computationally so far with lattice QCD are in close resemblance to those which intrigued experimentalists a century ago, they also test the theoretical understanding which was unavailable to guide the nuclear pioneers but developed since then. This understanding is shown to be deficient in terms of correlations amongst nuclear observables and their sensitivity to fundamental parameters. By reviewing the transition from one effective field theory to another, from QCD to pionful chiral theories to pionless and eventually to cluster theories, we identify some of those deficiencies and conceptual problems awaiting a solution before QCD can be identified as the high-energy theory from which the nuclear landscape emerges.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomáš Brauner

Abstract We initiate the classification of nonrelativistic effective field theories (EFTs) for Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons, possessing a set of redundant, coordinate-dependent symmetries. Similarly to the relativistic case, such EFTs are natural candidates for “exceptional” theories, whose scattering amplitudes feature an enhanced soft limit, that is, scale with a higher power of momentum at long wavelengths than expected based on the mere presence of Adler’s zero. The starting point of our framework is the assumption of invariance under spacetime translations and spatial rotations. The setup is nevertheless general enough to accommodate a variety of nontrivial kinematical algebras, including the Poincaré, Galilei (or Bargmann) and Carroll algebras. Our main result is an explicit construction of the nonrelativistic versions of two infinite classes of exceptional theories: the multi-Galileon and the multi-flavor Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) theories. In both cases, we uncover novel Wess-Zumino terms, not present in their relativistic counterparts, realizing nontrivially the shift symmetries acting on the NG fields. We demonstrate how the symmetries of the Galileon and DBI theories can be made compatible with a nonrelativistic, quadratic dispersion relation of (some of) the NG modes.


Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Mariana Graña ◽  
Alvaro Herráez

The swampland is the set of seemingly consistent low-energy effective field theories that cannot be consistently coupled to quantum gravity. In this review we cover some of the conjectural properties that effective theories should possess in order not to fall in the swampland, and we give an overview of their main applications to particle physics. The latter include predictions on neutrino masses, bounds on the cosmological constant, the electroweak and QCD scales, the photon mass, the Higgs potential and some insights about supersymmetry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferruccio Feruglio

Abstract The conditions for the absence of gauge anomalies in effective field theories (EFT) are rivisited. General results from the cohomology of the BRST operator do not prevent potential anomalies arising from the non-renormalizable sector, when the gauge group is not semi-simple, like in the Standard Model EFT (SMEFT). By considering a simple explicit model that mimics the SMEFT properties, we compute the anomaly in the regularized theory, including a complete set of dimension six operators. We show that the dependence of the anomaly on the non-renormalizable part can be removed by adding a local counterterm to the theory. As a result the condition for gauge anomaly cancellation is completely controlled by the charge assignment of the fermion sector, as in the renormalizable theory.


1995 ◽  
Vol 51 (9) ◽  
pp. 4924-4933 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Luke ◽  
Aneesh V. Manohar ◽  
Martin J. Savage

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