Two-loop application of the Breitenlohner-Maison/’t Hooft-Veltman scheme with non-anticommuting γ5: full renormalization and symmetry-restoring counterterms in an abelian chiral gauge theory

We apply the BMHV scheme for non-anticommuting γ5 to an abelian chiral gauge theory at the two-loop level. As our main result, we determine the full structure of symmetry-restoring counterterms up to the two-loop level. These counterterms turn out to have the same structure as at the one-loop level and a simple interpretation in terms of restoration of well-known Ward identities. In addition, we show that the ultraviolet divergences cannot be canceled completely by counterterms generated by field and parameter renormalization, and we determine needed UV divergent evanescent counterterms. The paper establishes the two-loop methodology based on the quantum action principle and direct computations of Slavnov-Taylor identity breakings. The same method will be applicable to nonabelian gauge theories.

The Abelian Higgs model under a gauge invariant looking glass: exploiting new Ward identities for gauge invariant operators and the Equivalence Theorem

The content of two additional Ward identities exhibited by the U(1) Higgs model is exploited. These novel Ward identities can be derived only when a pair of local composite operators providing a gauge invariant setup for the Higgs particle and the massive vector boson is introduced in the theory from the beginning. Among the results obtained from the above mentioned Ward identities, we underline a new exact relationship between the stationary condition for the vacuum energy, the vanishing of the tadpoles and the vacuum expectation value of the gauge invariant scalar operator. We also present a characterization of the two-point correlation function of the composite operator corresponding to the vector boson in terms of the two-point function of the elementary gauge fields. Finally, a discussion on the connection between the cartesian and the polar parametrization of the complex scalar field is presented in the light of the Equivalence Theorem. The latter can in the current case be understood in the language of a constrained cohomology, which also allows to rewrite the action in terms of the aforementioned gauge invariant operators. We also comment on the diminished role of the global U(1) symmetry and its breaking.

The Cosmological Bootstrap: Spinning correlators from symmetries and factorization

We extend the cosmological bootstrap to correlators involving massless spinning particles, focusing on spin-1 and spin-2. In de Sitter space, these correlators are constrained both by symmetries and by locality. In particular, the de Sitter isometries become conformal symmetries on the future boundary of the spacetime, which are reflected in a set of Ward identities that the boundary correlators must satisfy. We solve these Ward identities by acting with weight-shifting operators on scalar seed solutions. Using this weight-shifting approach, we derive three- and four-point correlators of massless spin-1 and spin-2 fields with conformally coupled scalars. Four-point functions arising from tree-level exchange are singular in particular kinematic configurations, and the coefficients of these singularities satisfy certain factorization properties. We show that in many cases these factorization limits fix the structure of the correlators uniquely, without having to solve the conformal Ward identities. The additional constraint of locality for massless spinning particles manifests itself as current conservation on the boundary. We find that the four-point functions only satisfy current conservation if the s, t, and u-channels are related to each other, leading to nontrivial constraints on the couplings between the conserved currents and other operators in the theory. For spin-1 currents this implies charge conservation, while for spin-2 currents we recover the equivalence principle from a purely boundary perspective. For multiple spin-1 fields, we recover the structure of Yang--Mills theory. Finally, we apply our methods to slow-roll inflation and derive a few phenomenologically relevant scalar-tensor three-point functions.

Anomalous symmetries end at the boundary

A global symmetry of a quantum field theory is said to have an ’t Hooft anomaly if it cannot be promoted to a local symmetry of a gauged theory. In this paper, we show that the anomaly is also an obstruction to defining symmetric boundary conditions. This applies to Lorentz symmetries with gravitational anomalies as well. For theories with perturbative anomalies, we demonstrate the obstruction by analyzing the Wess-Zumino consistency conditions and current Ward identities in the presence of a boundary. We then recast the problem in terms of symmetry defects and find the same conclusions for anomalies of discrete and orientation-reversing global symmetries, up to the conjecture that global gravitational anomalies, which may not be associated with any diffeomorphism symmetry, also forbid the existence of boundary conditions. This conjecture holds for known gravitational anomalies in D ≤ 3 which allows us to conclude the obstruction result for D ≤ 4.

Momentum space parity-odd CFT 3-point functions

We study the parity-odd sector of 3-point functions comprising scalar operators and conserved currents in conformal field theories in momentum space. We use momentum space conformal Ward identities as well as spin-raising and weight-shifting operators to fix the form of some of these correlators. Wherever divergences appear we discuss their regularisation and renormalisation using appropriate counter-terms.

One loop verification of SMEFT Ward Identities

We verify Standard Model Effective Field Theory Ward identities to one loop order when background field gauge is used to quantize the theory. The results we present lay the foundation of next to leading order automatic generation of results in the SMEFT, in both the perturbative and non-perturbative expansion using the geoSMEFT formalism, and background field gauge.

ABJ correlators with weakly broken higher spin symmetry

We consider four-point functions of operators in the stress tensor multiplet of the 3d $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 6 U(N)k× U(N + M)−k or SO(2)2k× USp(2 + 2M)−k ABJ theories in the limit where M and k are taken to infinity while N and λ ∼ M/k are held fixed. In this limit, these theories have weakly broken higher spin symmetry and are holographically dual to $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 6 higher spin gravity on AdS4, where λ is dual to the bulk parity breaking parameter. We use the weakly broken higher spin Ward identities, superconformal Ward identities, and the Lorentzian inversion formula to fully determine the tree level stress tensor multiplet four-point function up to two free parameters. We then use supersymmetric localization to fix both parameters for the ABJ theories in terms of λ, so that our result for the tree level correlator interpolates between the free theory at λ = 0 and a parity invariant interacting theory at λ = 1/2. We compare the CFT data extracted from this correlator to a recent numerical bootstrap conjecture for the exact spectrum of U(1)2M× U(1 + M)−2M ABJ theory (i.e. λ = 1/2 and N = 1), and find good agreement in the higher spin regime.

The Feynman rules for the SMEFT in the background field gauge

We present a package for FeynRules which derives the Feynman rules for the Standard Model Effective Field Theory up to dimension-six using the background field method for gauge fixing. The package includes operators which shift the kinetic and mass terms of the Lagrangian up to dimension-eight and including dimension-six squared effects consistently. To the best of the author’s knowledge this is the first publicly available package to include dimension-six squared effects consistently. The package is validated in a partner publication by analyzing the Ward Identities at dimension-six and one-loop order. We also extend the partner work in this article by including the dimension-six squared effects further demonstrating the consistency of their implementation. In doing so we find that failure to consistently include field shifts to dimension-six squared causes a breakdown in the Ward identities implying concerns about many calculations in the literature which do not properly incorporate these effects.The FeynRules files, as well as Mathematica notebooks performing the relevant calculations, can be downloaded from the FeynRules website and are included as supplementary material to this publication.