Renormalization group flow in scalar-tensor theories: I

By Gaurav Narain, Roberto Percacci. 2009

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the renormalization group flow in a class of scalar-tensor theories involving at most two derivatives of the fields. We show in general that minimal coupling is self-consistent, in the sense that when the scalar self-couplings are switched off, their beta functions also vanish. Complete, explicit beta functions that could be applied to a variety of cosmological models are given in a five-parameter truncation of the theory in d = 4. In any dimension d > 2 we find that the flow has only a ‘Gaussian Matter’ fixed point, where all scalar self-interactions vanish but Newton's constant and the cosmological constant are nontrivial. The properties of these fixed points can be studied algebraically to some extent. In d = 3 we also find a gravitationally dressed version of the Wilson–Fisher fixed point, but it seems to have unphysical properties. These findings are in accordance with the hypothesis that these theories are asymptotically safe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3de292408965a5acf9fd8c8f07f7089192f52a50

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Citations in the corpus

Higgs boson mass and new physics (2012, background): “However, if aλ > 0, as follows from computations of [49, 50], only one value of the Higgs boson mass MH = M safety min leads to asymptotically safe behavior of λ.”
An Asymptotically Safe Guide to Quantum Gravity and Matter (2018, background): “The corresponding theory space also contains non-minimal matter-curvature couplings (Narain and Percacci, 2010; Percacci and Vacca, 2015; Eichhorn and Lippoldt, 2017; Eichhorn et al., 2018e).”