Transmutation of nonlocal scale in infinite derivative field theories

I study some aspects of the renormalization of quantum field theories with infinitely many couplings in arbitrary space-time dimensions. I prove that when the space-time manifold admits a metric of constant curvature the propagator is not affected by terms with higher derivatives. More generally, certain lagrangian terms are not turned on by renormalization, if they are absent at the tree level. This restricts the form of the action of a non-renormalizable theory, and has app...

I explain the methods that are used in field theory for problems involving typical momenta on two or more widely disparate scales. The principal topics are: (a) renormalization, which treats the problem of taking an ultra-violet cut-off to infinity, (b) the renormalization group, which is used to relate phenomena on different scales, (c) the operator product expansion, which shows how to obtain the asymptotics of amplitudes when some of its external momenta approach infinity.

A new attempt is demonstrated that QFTs can be UV finite if they are viewed as the low energy effective theories of a fundamental underlying theory (that is complete and well-defined in all respects) according to the modern standard point of view. This approach works for any interaction model and space-time dimension. It is much simpler in principle and in technology comparing to any known renormalization program.Unlike the known renormalization methods, the importance of the...

In this paper, we consider an infinite derivative scalar field action with infinite derivative kinetic and interaction terms. We establish that the theory is unitary if the correlation functions are formulated in Euclidean space and then analytically continued in their external momenta to Minkowski space.

In this paper we will consider the most general quadratic curvature action with infinitely many covariant derivatives of massless gravity in three spacetime dimensions. The action is parity invariant and torsion-free and contains the same off-shell degrees of freedom as the Einstein-Hilbert action in general relativity. In the ultraviolet, with an appropriate choice of the propagator given by the exponential of an entire function, the point-like curvature singularity can be s...

We hereby present a class of multidimensional higher derivative theories of gravity that realizes an ultraviolet completion of Einstein general relativity. This class is marked by a "non-polynomal" entire function (form factor), which averts extra degrees of freedom (including ghosts) and improves the high energy behavior of the loop amplitudes. By power counting arguments, it is proved that the theory is super-renormalizable in any dimension, i.e. only one-loop divergences s...

In this paper we study perturbatively an extension of the Stelle higher derivative gravity involving an infinite number of derivative terms. We know that the usual quadratic action is renormalizable but suffers of the unitarity problem because of the presence of a ghost (state of negative norm) in the theory. The new theory is instead ghost-free since the introduction of (in general) two entire functions in the model with the property do not introduce new poles in the propaga...

In frames of the nonlocal and nonpolynomial quantum theory of the one component scalar field in $D$-dimensional spacetime, stated by Gariy Vladimirovich Efimov, the expansion of the $\mathcal{S}$-matrix is revisited for different interaction Lagrangians and for some kinds of Gaussian propagators modified by different ultraviolet form factors $F$ which depend on some length parameter $l$. The expansion of the $\mathcal{S}$-matrix is of the form of a grand canonical partition f...

This review summarizes Effective Field Theory techniques, which are the modern theoretical tools for exploiting the existence of hierarchies of scale in a physical problem. The general theoretical framework is described, and explicitly evaluated for a simple model. Power-counting results are illustrated for a few cases of practical interest, and several applications to Quantum Electrodynamics are described.

In this work we explicitly show that the perturbative unitarity of analytic infinite derivative (AID) scalar field theories can be achieved using a modified prescription for computing scattering amplitudes. The crux of the new prescription is the analytic continuation of a result obtained in the Euclidean signature to the Minkowski external momenta. We intensively elaborate an example of a non-local $\phi^4$ model for various infinite derivative operators. General UV properti...