Anomalies, unitarity, and quantum irreversibility.
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Publication:1808043
DOI10.1006/APHY.1999.5949zbMATH Open1042.81566arXivhep-th/9903059OpenAlexW1977517651MaRDI QIDQ1808043FDOQ1808043
Publication date: 30 November 1999
Published in: Annals of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)
Abstract: The trace anomaly in external gravity is the sum of three terms at criticality: the square of the Weyl tensor, the Euler density and Box R, with coefficients, properly normalized, called c, a and a', the latter being ambiguously defined by an additive constant. Considerations about unitarity and positivity properties of the induced actions allow us to show that the total RG flows of a and a' are equal and therefore the a'-ambiguity can be consistently removed through the identification a'=a. The picture that emerges clarifies several long-standing issues. The interplay between unitarity and renormalization implies that the flux of the renormalization group is irreversible. A monotonically decreasing a-function interpolating between the appropriate values is naturally provided by a'. The total a-flow is expressed non-perturbatively as the invariant (i.e. scheme-independent) area of the graph of the beta function between the fixed points. We test this prediction to the fourth loop order in perturbation theory, in QCD with Nf ~< 11/2 Nc and in supersymmetric QCD. There is agreement also in the absence of an interacting fixed point (QED and phi^4-theory). Arguments for the positivity of a are also discussed.
Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9903059
Cites Work
- Title not available (Why is that?)
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Cited In (13)
- Holographic RG flows from Quasi-Topological Gravity
- On Newton-Cartan local renormalization group and anomalies
- Correlation functions in holographic renormalization group flows
- The exact superconformal \(R\)-symmetry minimizes \(\tau _{RR}\)
- Correlation functions of the energy-momentum tensor on spaces of constant curvature
- Scheme-dependence of holographic conformal anomaly in d5 gauged supergravity with non-trivial bulk potential
- ``Integrability of RG flows and duality in three dimensions in the \(1/N\) expansion
- Quantum irreversibility in arbitrary dimension
- On renormalization group flows and the \(a\)-theorem in 6d
- Conformal symmetry, anomaly and effective action for metric-scalar gravity with torsion
- Quantum dilatonic gravity in \(d=2,4\) and \(5\) dimensions
- Holographic RG flows, entanglement entropy and the sum rule
- A new gravitational action for the trace anomaly
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