Alexander Monin

Spontaneously Broken Conformal Symmetry: Dealing with the Trace Anomaly

A bstractThe majority of renormalizable field theories possessing the scale invariance at the classical level exhibits the trace anomaly once quantum corrections are taken into account. This leads to the breaking of scale and conformal invariance. At the same time any realistic theory must contain gravity and is thus non-renormalizable. We show that discarding the renormalizability it is possible to construct viable models allowing to preserve the scale invariance at the quantum level. We present explicit one-loop computations for two toy models to demonstrate the main idea of the approach. Constructing the renormalized energy momentum tensor we show that it is traceless, meaning that the conformal invariance is also preserved.

(Re-)inventing the relativistic wheel: gravity, cosets, and spinning objects

A bstractSpace-time symmetries are a crucial ingredient of any theoretical model in physics. Unlike internal symmetries, which may or may not be gauged and/or spontaneously broken, space-time symmetries do not admit any ambiguity: they are gauged by gravity, and any conceivable physical system (other than the vacuum) is bound to break at least some of them. Motivated by this observation, we study how to couple gravity with the Goldstone fields that non-linearly realize spontaneously broken space-time symmetries. This can be done in complete generality by weakly gauging the Poincaré symmetry group in the context of the coset construction. To illustrate the power of this method, we consider three kinds of physical systems coupled to gravity: superfluids, relativistic membranes embedded in a higher dimensional space, and rotating point-like objects. This last system is of particular importance as it can be used to model spinning astrophysical objects like neutron stars and black holes. Our approach provides a systematic and unambiguous parametrization of the degrees of freedom of these systems.

On the effective operators for Dark Matter annihilations

We consider effective operators describing Dark Matter (DM) interactions with Standard Model fermions. In the non-relativistic limit of the DM field, the operators can be organized according to their mass dimension and their velocity behaviour, i.e. whether they describe s- or p-wave annihilations. The analysis is carried out for self-conjugate DM (real scalar or Majorana fermion). In this case, the helicity suppression at work in the annihilation into fermions is lifted by electroweak bremsstrahlung. We construct and study all dimension-8 operators encoding such an effect. These results are of interest in indirect DM searches.

Semiclassics, Goldstone bosons and CFT data

A bstractHellerman et al. (arXiv:1505.01537) have shown that in a generic CFT the spectrum of operators carrying a large U(1) charge can be analyzed semiclassically in an expansion in inverse powers of the charge. The key is the operator state correspondence by which such operators are associated with a finite density superfluid phase for the theory quantized on the cylinder. The dynamics is dominated by the corresponding Goldstone hydrodynamic mode and the derivative expansion coincides with the inverse charge expansion. We illustrate and further clarify this situation by first considering simple quantum mechanical analogues. We then systematize the approach by employing the coset construction for non-linearly realized space-time symmetries. Focussing on CFT3 we illustrate the case of higher rank and non-abelian groups and the computation of higher point functions. Three point function coefficients turn out to satisfy universal scaling laws and correlations as the charge and spin are varied.

Weyl vs. conformal

Abstract In this note we show that given a conformally invariant theory in flat space-time, it is not always possible to couple it to gravity in a Weyl invariant way.

Partition function on spheres: How to use zeta function regularization

It is known that not all summation methods are linear and stable. Zeta function regularization is in general nonlinear. However, in some cases formal manipulations with zeta function regularization (assuming linearity of sums) lead to correct results. We consider several examples and show why this happens.

Gauging nonrelativistic field theories using the coset construction

We discuss how nonrelativistic spacetime symmetries can be gauged in the context of the coset construction. We consider theories invariant under the centrally extended Galilei algebra as well as the Lifshitz one, and we investigate under what conditions they can be supplemented by scale transformations. We also clarify the role of torsion in these theories.

Weyl and Ricci gauging from the coset construction

In this paper we demonstrate how, using the coset construction, a theory can be systematically made Weyl invariant by gauging the scale symmetry. We show that an analog of the inverse Higgs constraint allows the elimination of the Weyl vector (gauge) field in favor of curvatures. We extend the procedure-previously coined Ricci gauging-and discuss its subtlety for the case of theories with higher derivatives of conformally variant fields.