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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14978 |
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| _version_ | 1866914615033593856 |
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| author | Fernández-Sarmiento, Lucas Penco, Riccardo Rosen, Rachel A |
| author_facet | Fernández-Sarmiento, Lucas Penco, Riccardo Rosen, Rachel A |
| contents | Consistency constraints for low-energy theories, especially those lacking Lorentz invariance, have recently garnered attention. Building on results from black hole thermodynamics, we investigate the conjecture that leading symmetry-preserving irrelevant deformations of a conformal field theory (CFT) in the infrared must increase the system's entropy. We show that this entropy-positivity conjecture is equivalent to a decrease in the thermal grand potential at a fixed temperature. We then evaluate this proposal against various known positivity bounds and other physical constraints on effective theories: for $U(1)$ Goldstone bosons with a quartic self-interaction at (non-)zero chemical potential, for the Euler-Heisenberg model, for the $O(N)$ nonlinear sigma model in $(2+1)D$, and for $T\bar{T}$ deformations of the 2D Ising CFT. We find broad agreement with the entropy-positivity conjecture, and we discuss test cases where the conjecture is not expected to apply, such as deformations that break internal symmetries of the CFT. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_14978 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | On Entropy Bounds for Irrelevant Operators Fernández-Sarmiento, Lucas Penco, Riccardo Rosen, Rachel A High Energy Physics - Theory Consistency constraints for low-energy theories, especially those lacking Lorentz invariance, have recently garnered attention. Building on results from black hole thermodynamics, we investigate the conjecture that leading symmetry-preserving irrelevant deformations of a conformal field theory (CFT) in the infrared must increase the system's entropy. We show that this entropy-positivity conjecture is equivalent to a decrease in the thermal grand potential at a fixed temperature. We then evaluate this proposal against various known positivity bounds and other physical constraints on effective theories: for $U(1)$ Goldstone bosons with a quartic self-interaction at (non-)zero chemical potential, for the Euler-Heisenberg model, for the $O(N)$ nonlinear sigma model in $(2+1)D$, and for $T\bar{T}$ deformations of the 2D Ising CFT. We find broad agreement with the entropy-positivity conjecture, and we discuss test cases where the conjecture is not expected to apply, such as deformations that break internal symmetries of the CFT. |
| title | On Entropy Bounds for Irrelevant Operators |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Theory |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14978 |