Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peng, Guangzhuo, Shao, Long-Qi, Tokareva, Anna, Xu, Yongjun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09717
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909649626726400
author Peng, Guangzhuo
Shao, Long-Qi
Tokareva, Anna
Xu, Yongjun
author_facet Peng, Guangzhuo
Shao, Long-Qi
Tokareva, Anna
Xu, Yongjun
contents Implications of general properties of quantum field theory, such as causality, unitarity, and locality include constraints on the couplings of the effective field theory (EFT) coefficients. These constraints follow from the connections between the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) theory imposed by dispersion relations for four-particle amplitudes which formally allow us to express EFT couplings through the moments of positive-definite functions (imaginary parts of partial wave amplitudes) forming the EFT-hedron geometry. Previous studies of these positivity bounds were mainly focused on the weakly coupled EFTs, limiting the analysis to tree-level amplitudes of the IR theory. In this work, we extend the scope of positivity bounds including one-loop amplitudes, which is essential especially for the loops of massless particles. Examining a single scalar theory we found that the presence of massless loops cannot be reduced only to the running of EFT couplings because loops modify the crossing symmetry relations (null constraints). Our results demonstrate that while for small coupling constants, the one-loop bounds are in good agreement with the tree-level results, the allowed EFT parameter ranges can be significantly modified if a weak coupling assumption is not additionally imposed. We present the unitarity bounds on dimension-8 and dimension-10 EFT couplings beyond the weak coupling assumption in five and six spacetime dimensions. We discuss the difficulties of obtaining the constraints in forward limit in four dimensions related to the infrared singularities and show how to overcome these problems by constructing finite combinations of null constraints.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_09717
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Running EFT-hedron with null constraints at loop level
Peng, Guangzhuo
Shao, Long-Qi
Tokareva, Anna
Xu, Yongjun
High Energy Physics - Theory
Implications of general properties of quantum field theory, such as causality, unitarity, and locality include constraints on the couplings of the effective field theory (EFT) coefficients. These constraints follow from the connections between the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) theory imposed by dispersion relations for four-particle amplitudes which formally allow us to express EFT couplings through the moments of positive-definite functions (imaginary parts of partial wave amplitudes) forming the EFT-hedron geometry. Previous studies of these positivity bounds were mainly focused on the weakly coupled EFTs, limiting the analysis to tree-level amplitudes of the IR theory. In this work, we extend the scope of positivity bounds including one-loop amplitudes, which is essential especially for the loops of massless particles. Examining a single scalar theory we found that the presence of massless loops cannot be reduced only to the running of EFT couplings because loops modify the crossing symmetry relations (null constraints). Our results demonstrate that while for small coupling constants, the one-loop bounds are in good agreement with the tree-level results, the allowed EFT parameter ranges can be significantly modified if a weak coupling assumption is not additionally imposed. We present the unitarity bounds on dimension-8 and dimension-10 EFT couplings beyond the weak coupling assumption in five and six spacetime dimensions. We discuss the difficulties of obtaining the constraints in forward limit in four dimensions related to the infrared singularities and show how to overcome these problems by constructing finite combinations of null constraints.
title Running EFT-hedron with null constraints at loop level
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09717