English

Comment on the cosmological constant for $\lambda \phi^4$ theory in $d$ spacetime dimensions

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-09-15 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

In a recent article we showed that the analog of the cosmological constant in two spacetime dimensions for a wide variety of integrable quantum field theories has the form ρvac=m2/2g\rho_{\rm vac} = - m^2 /2 \mathfrak{g} where mm is a physical mass and g\mathfrak{g} is a generalized coupling, where in the free field limit g0\mathfrak{g} \to 0, ρvac\rho_{\rm vac} diverges. We speculated that in four spacetime dimensions ρvac\rho_{\rm vac} takes a similar form ρvac=m4/2g\rho_{\rm vac} = - m^4/2 \mathfrak{g}, but did not support this idea in any specific model. In this article we study this problem for λϕ4\lambda \phi^4 theory in dd spacetime dimensions. We show how to obtain the exact ρvac\rho_{\rm vac} for the sinh-Gordon theory in the weak coupling limit by using a saddle point approximation. This calculation indicates that the cosmological constant can be well-defined, positive or negative, without spontaneous symmetry breaking. We also show that ρvac\rho_{\rm vac} satisfies a Callan-Symanzik type of renormalization group equation. For the most interesting case physically, ρvac\rho_{\rm vac} is positive and can arise from a marginally relevant negative coupling g\mathfrak{g} and the cosmological constant flows to zero at low energies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.13075,
  title  = {Comment on the cosmological constant for $\lambda \phi^4$ theory in $d$ spacetime dimensions},
  author = {André LeClair},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.13075},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

New version: Footnote added: the need for analytic continuation of m^2 in order to reproduce exact results for the sinh-Gordon can be attributed to the need to treat the particle as a fermion in the TBA in 2 spacetime dimensions

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:17:40.363Z