Explore the Origin of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking from Adaptive Perturbation Method

TL;DR

This paper investigates the origin of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the (3+1)d φ^4 theory using an adaptive perturbation method, revealing that the theory remains trivial and does not exhibit SSB, with Lorentz symmetry restored through a resummation technique.

Contribution

It introduces an adaptive perturbation approach to analyze strong coupling regimes in scalar field theory, providing new insights into the triviality and symmetry properties of φ^4 theory.

Findings

Evidence for quantum triviality at high energies.

The φ^4 theory does not spontaneously break symmetry.

Lorentz symmetry can be restored via resummation of Feynman diagrams.

Abstract

Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs when the underlying laws of a physical system are symmetric, but the vacuum state chosen by the system is not. The (3+1)d $\phi^4$ theory is relatively simple compared to other more complex theories, making it a good starting point for investigating the origin of non-trivial vacua. The adaptive perturbation method is a technique used to handle strongly coupled systems. The study of strongly correlated systems is useful in testing holography. It has been successful in strongly coupled QM and is being generalized to scalar field theory to analyze the system in the strong-coupling regime. The unperturbed Hamiltonian does not commute with the usual number operator. However, the quantized scalar field admits a plane-wave expansion when acting on the vacuum. While quantizing the scalar field theory, the field can be expanded into plane-wave modes, making the calculations more tractable. However, the Lorentz symmetry, which describes how physical laws remain the same under certain spacetime transformations, might not be manifest in this approach. The proposed elegant resummation of Feynman diagrams aims to restore the Lorentz symmetry in the calculations. The results obtained using this method are compared with numerical solutions for specific values of the coupling constant $\lambda = 1, 2, 4, 8, 16$. Finally, we find evidence for quantum triviality, where self-consistency of the theory in the UV requires $\lambda = 0$. This result implies that the $\phi^4$ theory alone does not experience SSB, and the $\langle \phi\rangle = 0$ phase is protected under the RG-flow by a boundary of Gaussian fixed-points.