We derive bounds on couplings in the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) as a consequence of causality and the analytic structure of scattering amplitudes. In the SMEFT, there are 64 independent operators at mass dimension eight that are quartic in bosons (either Higgs or gauge fields) and that contain four derivatives and/or field strengths, including both CP-conserving and CP-violating operators. Using analytic dispersion relation arguments for two-to-two bosonic scattering amplitudes, we derive 27 independent bounds on the sign or magnitude of the couplings. We show that these bounds also follow as a consequence of causality of signal propagation in nonvacuum SM backgrounds. These bounds come in two qualitative forms: i) positivity of (various linear combinations of) couplings of CP-even operators and ii) upper bounds on the magnitude of CP-odd operators in terms of (products of) CP-even couplings. We exhibit various classes of example completions, which all satisfy our EFT bounds. These bounds have consequences for current and future particle physics experiments, as part of the observable parameter space is inconsistent with causality and analyticity. To demonstrate the impact of our bounds, we consider applications both to SMEFT constraints derived at colliders and to limits on the neutron electric dipole moment, highlighting the connection between such searches suggested by infrared consistency.
At high energy the standard model possesses conformal symmetry at the classical level. This is reflected at the quantum level by relations between the different beta functions of the model. These relations are known as the Weyl consistency conditions. We show that it is possible to satisfy them order by order in perturbation theory, provided that a suitable coupling constant counting scheme is used. As a direct phenomenological application, we study the stability of the standard model vacuum at high energies and compare with previous computations violating the Weyl consistency conditions.
Talk given at the 26th Workshop: ``From Superstrings to Supergravity" Erice - Sicily, 5-12 December 1992: In this talk we discuss string consistency requirements on four dimensional string models, namely the cancellation of target space duality anomalies. The analysis is explicitly performed for (hypothetical) orbifold models assuming the massless spectrum of the supersymmetric standard model. In addition, some phenomenological properties of four-dimensional strings, like the unification of the standard model gauge coupling constants and soft supersymmetry breaking parameters, are investigated…
We study compatibility of the Standard Model of particle physics and General Relativity by means of gravitational positivity bounds, which provide a necessary condition for a low-energy gravitational theory to be UV completable within the weakly coupled regime of gravity. In particular, we identify the cutoff scale of the Standard Model coupled to gravity by studying consistency of light-by-light scattering. While the precise value depends on details of the Pomeron effects in QCD, the cutoff scale reads $10^{16}$GeV if the single-Pomeron exchange picture works well up to this scale. We also de…
In the K and Bd systems, indirect CP violation is quantified by the parameters epsilon_K and sin 2beta respectively. Within the Standard Model, the uniqueness of the CP violating phase implies that the measurement of either between epsilon_K and sin 2beta permits to predict the other. Since both these parameters are very well measured, this turns into a powerful test of consistency. I discuss the status of this test, especially in the light of recent advances on the epsilon_K formula.
If the "Higgs mass" is not the physical mass of a real particle but rather an effective ultraviolet cutoff then a process energy dependence of this cutoff must be admitted. Precision data from at least two energy scale experimental points are necessary to test this hypothesis. The first set of precision data is provided by the $Z$-boson peak experiments. We argue that the second set can be given by 10-20GeV $e^+e^-$ colliders. We put attention to the special role of tau polarization experiments that can be sensitive to the "Higgs mass" for a sample of $\sim10^8$ produced tau pairs. We argue th…
In the context of an inflationary Randall-Sundrum Type II braneworld (RS2) we calculate spectral indices and amplitudes of cosmological scalar and tensor perturbations, up to second order in slow-roll parameters. Under very simple assumptions, extrapolating next-order formulae from first-order calculations in the case of a de Sitter brane, we see that the degeneracy between standard and braneworld lowest-order consistency equations is broken, thus giving different signatures of early-universe inflationary expansion. Using the latest results from WMAP for estimates of cosmological observables, …
There exist two deformations of standard electrodynamics that describe Lorentz symmetry violation in the photon sector: CPT-odd Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory and CPT-even modified Maxwell theory. In this article, we focus on the parity-odd nonbirefringent sector of modified Maxwell theory. It is coupled to a standard Dirac theory of massive spin-1/2 fermions resulting in a modified quantum electrodynamics (QED). This theory is discussed with respect to properties such as microcausality and unitarity, where it turns out that these hold. Furthermore, a priori, the limit of the theory for vanishing…
We analyze the consistency of electroweak breaking within the simplest high-scale Standard Model type-I seesaw mechanism. We derive the full two-loop RGEs of the relevant parameters, including the quartic Higgs self-coupling of the Standard Model. For the simplest case of bare "right-handed" neutrino mass terms we find that, with large Yukawa couplings, the Higgs quartic self-coupling becomes negative much below the seesaw scale, so that the model may be inconsistent even as an effective theory. We show, however, that the "dynamical" type-I high-scale seesaw with spontaneous lepton number viol…
Several arguments given in arXiv:1912.12316 suggest that braneworld effective models with fields strictly localized on $δ$-like branes cannot be UV-completed by a fundamental theory including gravity, i.e. they belong to the Swampland. It is concluded that one should instead only consider models with quasilocalized zero-modes of higher-dimensional fields. In this comment, the arguments are critically reviewed, and various loopholes are proposed. Beyond that, the main point that is discussed is the notion of effective brane form factors, which are required when the singular behavior of the bran…
We show that large n-particle production rates derived in the semiclassical Higgsplosion limit of scalar field theoretical models with spontaneous symmetry breaking, are consistent with general principles of localizable quantum field theory. The strict localizability criterium of Jaffe defines quantum fields as operator-valued distributions acting on test functions that are localized in finite regions of space-time. The requirement of finite support of test functions in space-time ensures the causality property of QFT. The corresponding localizable fields need not be tempered distributions, an…
We study the consistency of orbifold field theories and clarify to what extent the condition of having an anomaly-free spectrum of zero-modes is sufficient to guarantee it. Preservation of gauge invariance at the quantum level is possible, although at the price, in general, of introducing operators that break the 5d local parity. These operators are, however, perfectly consistent with the orbifold projection. We also clarify the relation between localized Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) terms and anomalies. These terms can be consistently added, breaking neither local supersymmetry nor the gauge symmetr…
We rank the six latest Type Ia supernova (SnIa) datasets (Constitution (C), Union (U), ESSENCE (Davis) (E), Gold06 (G), SNLS 1yr (S) and SDSS-II (D)) in the context of the Chevalier-Polarski-Linder (CPL) parametrization $w(a)=w_0+w_1 (1-a)$, according to their Figure of Merit (FoM), their consistency with the cosmological constant ($Λ$CDM), their consistency with standard rulers (Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO)) and their mutual consistency. We find a significant improvement of the FoM (defined as the inverse area of the 95.4% parameter contour) with th…
We prove that any bilinear coupling of a massive spin-3/2 field can be brought into a gauge invariant form suggested by Pascalutsa by means of a non-linear field redefinition. The corresponding field transformation is given explicitly in a closed form and the implications for chiral effective field theory with explicit Delta (1232) isobar degrees of freedom are discussed.
We investigate an alternative CPT-odd Lorentz-breaking QED which includes the Carroll-Field-Jackiw (CFJ) term of the Standard Model Extension (SME), writing the gauge sector in the action in a Palatini-like form, in which the vectorial field and the field-strength tensor are treated as independent entities. Interestingly, this naturally induces a Lorentz-violating mass term in the classical action. We study physical consistency aspects of the model both at classical and quantum levels.
Promoting a theory with a finite number of terms into an effective field theory with an infinite number of terms worsens simplicity, predictability, falsifiability, and other attributes often favored in theory choice. However, the importance of these attributes pales in comparison with consistency, both observational and mathematical consistency, which propels the effective theory to be superior to its simpler truncated version of finite terms, whether that theory be renormalizable (e.g., Standard Model of particle physics) or nonrenormalizable (e.g., gravity). Some implications for the Large …
The single-field consistency conditions and the local ansatz have played separate but important roles in characterizing the non-Gaussian signatures of single- and multifield inflation respectively. We explore the precise relationship between these two approaches and their predictions. We demonstrate that the predictions of the single-field consistency conditions can never be satisfied by a general local ansatz with deviations necessarily arising at order $(n_s-1)^2$. This implies that there is, in principle, a minimum difference between single- and (fully local) multifield inflation in observa…
We study the tensor consistency relation in models of axion inflation with an SU(2) gauge field. In the tensor sector, we have two spin-2 modes, the standard gravity waves and the tensor perturbations of the SU(2) gauge field which sources the gravity waves at the linear level. Interestingly enough, we find that the gravity waves are adiabatic and Maldacena's consistency relation including a long wavelength gravity wave holds in this setup. However, since it is partially polarized, there is a difference between the (n+1)-point functions with different helicity states proportional to the ratio …
The consistency relation for the 3-point function of the CMB is a very powerful observational signature which is believed to be true for every inflationary model in which there is only one dynamical degree of freedom. Its importance relies on the fact that deviations from it might be detected in next generation experiments, allowing us to rule out all single field inflationary models. After making more precise the already existing proof of the consistency relation, we use a recently developed effective field theory for inflationary perturbations to provide an alternative and very explicit proo…
We study the consequences of spatial coordinate transformation in multi-field inflation. Among the spontaneously broken de Sitter isometries, only dilatation in the comoving gauge preserves the form of the metric and thus results in quantum-protected Slavnov-Taylor identities. We derive the corresponding consistency relations between correlation functions of cosmological perturbations in two different ways, by the connected and one-particle-irreducible Green's functions. The lowest-order consistency relations are explicitly given, and we find that even in multi-field inflation the consistency …
We study the symmetries of the post-recombination cosmological magnetohydrodynamical equations which describe the evolution of dark matter, baryons and magnetic fields in a self-consistent way. This is done both at the level of fluid equations and of Vlasov-Poisson-Maxwell equations in phase space. We discuss some consistency relations for the soft limit of the (n + 1)-correlator functions involving magnetic fields and matter overdensities. In particular, we stress that any violation of such consistency relations at equal-time would point towards an inflationary origin of the magnetic field.
If cosmic magnetic fields are indeed produced during inflation, they are likely to be correlated with the scalar metric perturbations that are responsible for the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies and Large Scale Structure. Within an archetypical model of inflationary magnetogenesis, we show that there exists a new simple consistency relation for the non-Gaussian cross correlation function of the scalar metric perturbation with two powers of the magnetic field in the squeezed limit where the momentum of the metric perturbation vanishes. We emphasize that such a consistency relation turn…
We point out the existence of a consistency relation involving the 3-point function of scalar perturbations which is valid in any inflationary model, independently of the inflaton Lagrangian under the assumption that the inflaton is the only dynamical field. The 3-point function in the limit in which one of the momenta is much smaller than the other two is fixed in terms of the power spectrum and its tilt. This relation, although very hard to verify experimentally, could be easily proved wrong by forecoming data, thus ruling out any scenario with a single dynamical field in a model independent…
We compute for general single-field inflation the intrinsic non-Gaussianity due to the self-interactions of the inflaton field in the squeezed limit. We recover the consistency relation in the context of the delta N formalism, and argue that there is a particular field redefinition that makes the intrinsic non-Gaussianity vanishing, thus improving the estimate of the local non-Gaussianity using the delta N formalism.
In this paper we compute the sizes of equilateral and orthogonal shape bispectrum for the general Lorentz invariant single-field inflation. The stability of field theory implies a non-negative square of sound speed which leads to a consistency relation between the sizes of orthogonal and equilateral shape bispectrum, namely $f_{NL}^{orth.}\lesssim -0.054 f_{NL}^{equil.}$. In particular, for the single-field Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) inflation, the consistency relation becomes $f_{NL}^{orth.}\simeq 0.070 f_{NL}^{equil.}\lesssim 0$. These consistency relations are also valid in the mixed scenario …
We generalize the consistency condition for the three-point function in single field inflation to the case of dissipative, multi-field, single-clock models. We use the recently introduced extension of the effective field theory of inflation that accounts for dissipative effects, to provide an explicit proof to leading (non-trivial) order in the generalized slow roll parameters and mixing with gravity scales. Our results illustrate the conditions necessary for the validity of the consistency relation in situations with many degrees of freedom relevant during inflation, namely that there is a pr…
Adding a scalar triplet to the Standard Model is one of the simplest ways of giving mass to neutrinos, providing at the same time a mechanism to stabilize the theory's vacuum. In this paper, we revisit these aspects of the type-II seesaw model pointing out that the bounded-from-below conditions for the scalar potential in use in the literature are not correct. We discuss some scenarios where the correction can be significant and sketch the typical scalar boson profile expected by consistency.
We present a criterion of consistency derived from the analogy between the partition function of a quantum field theory and that of a statistical system. Based on this we examine a new class of higher dimension operators that might act in the standard model.
We show that a perturbed inflationary spacetime, driven by a canonical single scalar field, is invariant under a special class of coordinate transformations together with a field reparametrization of the curvature perturbation in co-moving gauge. This transformation may be used to derive the squeezed limit of the 3-point correlation function of the co-moving curvature perturbations valid in the case that these do not freeze after horizon crossing. This leads to a generalized version of Maldacena's non-Gaussian consistency relation in the sense that the bispectrum squeezed limit is completely d…
The transport coefficients of causal relativistic dissipative fluid dynamics are calculated both in a field-theoretical and a kinetic approach. We find that the results from the traditional kinetic calculation by Israel and Stewart are modified. The new expressions for the viscous transport coefficients agree with the results obtained in the field-theoretical approach when the contributions from pair creation and annihilation are neglected.
Standard D-term inflation is studied in the framework of supergravity. D-term inflation produces cosmic strings, however it can still be compatible with CMB measurements without invoking any new physics. The cosmic strings contribution to the CMB data is not constant, nor dominant, contrary to some previous results. Using current CMB measurements, the free parameters (gauge and superpotential couplings, as well as the Fayet-Iliopoulos term) of D-term inflation are constrained.
We extend our study of deriving the local gauge invariance with spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of an effective field theory by considering self-interactions of the scalar field and inclusion of the electromagnetic interaction. By analyzing renormalizability and the scale separation conditions of three-, four- and five-point vertex functions of the scalar field, we fix the two couplings of the scalar field self-interactions of the leading order Lagrangian. Next we add the electromagnetic interaction and derive conditions relating the magnetic moment of the charged vector boson to …
It is argued that Weinberg's approach to the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction problem within effective field theory provides a consistent power counting for renormalized diagrams. Within this scheme the NN potential is organized as an expansion in terms of small quantities like small external momenta and the pion mass (divided by the characteristic large scale of the effective theory). Physical observables to any given order in these small quantities are calculated from the solutions of the Lippmann-Schwinger (or Schr\" odinger) equation.
We consider inflationary models in which vector fields are responsible for part or eventually all of the primordial curvature perturbation ζ. Such models are phenomenologically interesting since they naturally introduce anisotropies in the probability distribution function of the primordial fluctuations that can leave a measurable imprint in the cosmic microwave background. Assuming that non-Gaussianity is generated due to the superhorizon evolution, we use the δN formalism to do a complete tree level calculation of the non-Gaussianity parameters f_{NL} and τ_{NL} in the presence of vector fie…
