Geometry and unitarity of scalar fields coupled to gravity

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: He, Minxi, Kamada, Kohei, Mukaida, Kyohei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author He, Minxi
Kamada, Kohei
Mukaida, Kyohei
author_facet He, Minxi
Kamada, Kohei
Mukaida, Kyohei
contents We formulate scalar field theories coupled non-conformally to gravity in a manifestly frame-independent fashion. Physical quantities such as the $S$ matrix should be invariant under field redefinitions, and hence can be represented by the geometry of the target space. This elegant geometric formulation, however, is obscured when considering the coupling to gravity because of the redundancy associated with the Weyl transformation. The well-known example is the Higgs inflation, where the target space of the Higgs fields is flat in the Jordan frame but is curved in the Einstein frame. Furthermore, one can even show that any geometry of O$(N)$ nonlinear $σ$ models can be flattened by an appropriate Weyl transformation. In this Letter, we extend the notion of the target space by including the conformal mode of the metric, and show that the extended geometry provides a compact formulation that is manifestly Weyl-transformation/field-redefinition invariant. We identify the cutoff scale with the inverse of square root of the extended target space curvature and confirm that it coincides with that obtained from two-to-two scattering amplitudes based on our formalism.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2308_15420
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Geometry and unitarity of scalar fields coupled to gravity
He, Minxi
Kamada, Kohei
Mukaida, Kyohei
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Theory
We formulate scalar field theories coupled non-conformally to gravity in a manifestly frame-independent fashion. Physical quantities such as the $S$ matrix should be invariant under field redefinitions, and hence can be represented by the geometry of the target space. This elegant geometric formulation, however, is obscured when considering the coupling to gravity because of the redundancy associated with the Weyl transformation. The well-known example is the Higgs inflation, where the target space of the Higgs fields is flat in the Jordan frame but is curved in the Einstein frame. Furthermore, one can even show that any geometry of O$(N)$ nonlinear $σ$ models can be flattened by an appropriate Weyl transformation. In this Letter, we extend the notion of the target space by including the conformal mode of the metric, and show that the extended geometry provides a compact formulation that is manifestly Weyl-transformation/field-redefinition invariant. We identify the cutoff scale with the inverse of square root of the extended target space curvature and confirm that it coincides with that obtained from two-to-two scattering amplitudes based on our formalism.
title Geometry and unitarity of scalar fields coupled to gravity
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.15420