Vacuum Stability of the $\mathcal{PT}$-Symmetric $\left( -\phi^{4}\right) $ Scalar Field Theory

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the vacuum of the classically unstable -φ⁴ scalar field theory is stable in higher dimensions when analyzed through an effective potential approach using canonical quantization, extending previous quantum mechanical results.

Contribution

The study provides a novel effective potential calculation showing vacuum stability of the -φ⁴ theory in 1+1 and 2+1 dimensions using canonical quantization, avoiding complex metric operator calculations.

Findings

Effective potential is bounded from below in higher dimensions.

Vacuum condensate exhibits exponential behavior at small coupling.

Method confirms vacuum stability beyond quantum mechanics level.

Abstract

In this work, we study the vacuum stability of the classical unstable $\left( -\phi^{4}\right) $ scalar field potential. Regarding this, we obtained the effective potential, up to second order in the coupling, for the theory in $1+1$ and $2+1$ space-time dimensions. We found that the obtained effective potential is bounded from below, which proves the vacuum stability of the theory in space-time dimensions higher than the previously studied $0+1$ case. In our calculations, we used the canonical quantization regime in which one deals with operators rather than classical functions used in the path integral formulation. Therefore, the non-Hermiticity of the effective field theory is obvious. Moreover, the method we employ implements the canonical equal-time commutation relations and the Heisenberg picture for the operators. Thus, the metric operator is implemented in the calculations of the transition amplitudes. Accordingly, the method avoids the very complicated calculations needed in other methods for the metric operator. To test the accuracy of our results, we obtained the exponential behavior of the vacuum condensate for small coupling values, which has been obtained in the literature using other methods. We assert that this work is interesting, as all the studies in the literature advocate the stability of the $\left( -\phi^{4}\right) $ theory at the quantum mechanical level while our work extends the argument to the level of field quantization.