High Energy Physics Theory

We consider two conformal defects close to each other in a free theory, and study what happens as the distance between them goes to zero. This limit is the same as zooming out, and the two defects have fused to another defect. As we zoom in we find a non-conformal effective action for the fused defect. Among other things this means that we cannot in general decompose the two-point correlator of two defects in terms of other conformal defects. We prove the fusion using the path integral formalism by treating the defects as sources for a scalar in the bulk.

In this paper DeWitt's formalism for field theories is presented; it provides a framework in which the quantization of fields possessing infinite dimensional invariance groups may be carried out in a manifestly covariant (non-Hamiltonian) fashion, even in curved space-time. Another important virtue of DeWitt's approach is that it emphasizes the common features of apparently very different theories such as Yang-Mills theories and General Relativity; moreover, it makes it possible to classify all gauge theories in three categories characterized in a purely geometrical way, i.e., by the algebra which the generators of the gauge group obey; the geometry of such theories is the fundamental reason underlying the emergence of ghost fields in the corresponding quantum theories, too. These "tricky extra particles", as Feynman called them in 1964, contribute to a physical observable such as the stress-energy tensor, which can be expressed in terms of Feynman's Green function itself. Therefore, an entire section is devoted to the study of the Green functions of the neutron scalar meson: in flat space-time, the choice of a particular Green's function is the choice of an integration contour in the "momentum" space; in curved space-time the momentum space is no longer available, and the definition of the different Green functions requires a careful discussion itself. After the necessary introduction of bitensors, world function and parallel displacement tensor, an expansion for the Feynman propagator in curved space-time is obtained. Most calculations are explicitly shown.

We point out the necessity of resolving the apparent gauge dependence in the quantum corrections of cosmological observables for Higgs-like inflation models. We highlight the fact that this gauge dependence is due to the use of an asymmetric background current which is specific to a choice of coordinate system in the scalar manifold. Favoring simplicity over complexity, we further propose a practical shortcut to gauge-independent inflationary observables by using effective potential obtained from a polar-like background current choice. We demonstrate this shortcut for several explicit examples and present a gauge-independent prediction of inflationary observables in the Abelian Higgs model. Furthermore, with Nielsen's gauge dependence identities, we show that for any theory to all orders, a gauge-invariant current term gives a gauge-independent effective potential and thus gauge-invariant inflationary observables.

The higher category theory can be employed to generalize the BF action to the so-called 3BF action, by passing from the notion of a gauge group to the notion of a gauge 3-group. In this work we determine the full gauge symmetry of the 3BF action. To that end, the complete Hamiltonian analysis of the 3BF action for a general Lie 3-group is performed, by using the Dirac procedure. This analysis is the first step towards a canonical quantization of a 3BF theory. This is an important stepping-stone for the quantization of the complete Standard Model of elementary particles coupled to Einstein-Cartan gravity, formulated as a 3BF action with suitable simplicity constraints. We show that the resulting gauge symmetry group consists of the already familiar G-, H-, and L-gauge transformations, as well as additional M- and N-gauge transformations, which have not been discussed in the existing literature.

We analyze a novel approach to gauging rigid higher derivative (higher spin) symmetries of free relativistic actions defined on flat spacetime, building on the formalism originally developed by Bonora et al. and Bekaert et al. in their studies of linear coupling of matter fields to an infinite tower of higher spin fields. The off-shell definition is based on fields defined on a2d-dimensional master space equipped with a symplectic structure, where the infinite dimensional Lie algebra of gauge transformations is given by the Moyal commutator. Using this algebra we construct well-defined weakly non-local actions, both in the gauge and the matter sector, by mimicking the Yang-Mills procedure. The theory allows for a description in terms of an infinite tower of higher spin spacetime fields only on-shell. Interestingly, Euclidean theory allows for such a description also off-shell. Owing to its formal similarity to non-commutative field theories, the formalism allows for the introduction of a covariant potential which plays the role of the generalised vielbein. This covariant formulation uncovers the existence of other phases and shows that the theory can be written in a matrix model form. The symmetries of the theory are analyzed and conserved currents are explicitly constructed. By studying the spin-2 sector we show that the emergent geometry is closely related to teleparallel geometry, in the sense that the induced linear connection is opposite to Weitzenböck's.

A systematic procedure is proposed for inclusion of Stueckelberg fields. The procedure begins with the involutive closure when the original Lagrangian equations are complemented by all the lower order consequences. The involutive closure can be viewed as Lagrangian analogue of complementing constrained Hamiltonian system with secondary constraints. The involutively closed form of the field equations allows for explicitly covariant degree of freedom number count, which is stable with respect to deformations. If the original Lagrangian equations are not involutive, the involutive closure will be a non-Lagrangian system. The Stueckelberg fields are assigned to all the consequences included into the involutive closure of the Lagrangian system. The iterative procedure is proposed for constructing the gauge invariant action functional involving Stueckelberg fields such that Lagrangian equations are equivalent to the involutive closure of the original theory. The generators of the Stueckelberg gauge symmetry begin with the operators generating the closure of original Lagrangian system. These operators are not assumed to be a generators of gauge symmetry of any part of the original action, nor are they supposed to form an on shell integrable distribution. With the most general closure generators, the consistent Stueckelberg gauge invariant theory is iteratively constructed, without obstructions at any stage. The Batalin-Vilkovisky form of inclusion the Stueckelberg fields is worked out and existence theorem for the Stueckelberg action is proven.

We use the largeNcritical point formalism to computed-dimensional critical exponents at several orders in1/Nin an Ising Gross-Neveu universality class where the core interaction includes a Lie group generator. Specifying a particular symmetry group or taking the abelian limit of the final exponents recovers known results but also provides expressions for any Lie group or fermion representation.

Recently we explained that the classicalQSchur functions stand behind various well-known properties of the cubic Kontsevich model, and the next step is to ask what happens in this approach to the generalized Kontsevich model (GKM) with monomial potentialXn+1. We propose to use the Hall-Littlewood polynomials at the parameter equal to then-th root of unity as a generalization of theQSchur functions fromn=2to arbitraryn>2. They are associated withn-strict Young diagrams and are independent of time-variablespknwith numbers divisible byn. These are exactly the properties possessed by the generalized Kontsevich model (GKM), thus its partition function can be expanded in such functionsQ(n). However, the coefficients of this expansion remain to be properly identified. At this moment, we have not found any "superintegrability" property<character>?�character, which expressed these coefficients through the values ofQat delta-loci in then=2case. This is not a big surprise, because forn>2our suggestedQfunctions are not looking associated with characters.

As a modified gravity theory that introduces new gravitational degrees of freedom, the generalized SU(2) Proca theory (GSU2P for short) is the non-Abelian version of the well-known generalized Proca theory where the action is invariant under global transformations of the SU(2) group. This theory was formulated for the first time in Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) 084041, having implemented the required primary constraint-enforcing relation to make the Lagrangian degenerate and remove one degree of freedom from the vector field in accordance with the irreducible representations of the Poincaré group. It was later shown in Phys. Rev. D 101 (2020) 045008, ibid 045009, that a secondary constraint-enforcing relation, which trivializes for the generalized Proca theory but not for the SU(2) version, was needed to close the constraint algebra. It is the purpose of this paper to implement this secondary constraint-enforcing relation in GSU2P and to make the construction of the theory more transparent. Since several terms in the Lagrangian were dismissed in Phys. Rev. D 94 (2016) 084041 via their equivalence to other terms through total derivatives, not all of the latter satisfying the secondary constraint-enforcing relation, the work was not so simple as directly applying this relation to the resultant Lagrangian pieces of the old theory. Thus, we were motivated to reconstruct the theory from scratch. In the process, we found the beyond GSU2P.

We study the general embedding of aP(X,?)inflationary theory into a two-field theory with curved field space metric, which was proposed as a possible way to examine the relation between de Sitter Swampland conjecture and \textit{k}-inflation. We show that this embedding method fits into the special type of two-field model in which the heavy field can be integrated out at the full action level. However, this embedding is not exact due to the upper bound of the effective mass of the heavy field. We quantify the deviation between the speed of sound calculated via theP(X,?)theory and the embedding two-field picture to next leading order terms. We especially focus on the first potential slow roll parameter defined in the two-field picture and obtain an upper bound on it.