The $O(N)$ Model in $4<d<6$: Instantons and Complex CFTs

We revisit the scalar $O(N)$ model in the dimension range $4<d<6$ and study the effects caused by its metastability. As shown in previous work, this model formally possesses a fixed point where, perturbatively in the $1/N$ expansion, the operator scaling dimensions are real and above the unitarity bound. Here, we further show that these scaling dimensions do acquire small imaginary parts due to the instanton effects. In $d$ dimensions and for large $N$, we find that they are of order $e^{-N f(d)}$, where, remarkably, the function $f(d)$ equals the sphere free energy of a conformal scalar in $d-2$ dimensions. The non-perturbatively small imaginary parts also appear in other observables, such as the sphere free energy and two and three-point function coefficients, and we present some of their calculations. Therefore, at sufficiently large $N$, the $O(N)$ models in $4<d<6$ may be thought of as complex CFTs. When $N$ is large enough for the imaginary parts to be numerically negligible, the five-dimensional $O(N)$ models may be studied using the techniques of numerical bootstrap.