Related papers: A Clockwork Axion
We revisit certain subtleties of renormalization that arise when one derives a low-energy effective action by integrating out the heavy fields of a more complete theory. Usually these subtleties are circumvented by matching some physical…
A scalar field theory with 4-derivative kinetic terms and 4-derivative cubic and quartic couplings is presented as a proxy for quantum quadratic gravity (QQG). The scalar theory is renormalizable and asymptotically free and the remaining…
We discuss the effective field theory of large scale structure in terms of a single scalar degree of freedom, corresponding to the velocity potential of the matter fluid in a $\Lambda$CDM universe. This cosmic ``pion'' field is nonlinearly…
The pseudo-conformal scenario is an alternative to inflation in which the early universe is described by an approximate conformal field theory on flat, Minkowski space. Some fields acquire a time-dependent expectation value, which breaks…
We present a comprehensive discussion of the consistency of the effective quantum field theory of a single $Z_2$ symmetric scalar field. The theory is constructed from a bare Euclidean action which at a scale much greater than the…
We explore a class of effective field theory models of cosmic acceleration involving a metric and a single scalar field. These models can be obtained by starting with a set of ultralight pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons whose couplings to…
In a six-dimensional gauge theory compactified on a torus with magnetic flux, translational symmetry in the extra dimensions is broken. As a result, a massless Nambu-Goldstone boson appears in the four-dimensional effective Lagrangian. We…
A four-dimensional ${\rm SU}(4)$ confining Yang-Mills field, coupled to a fundamental fermion field and a bi-fundamental scalar field, has excitations with spin-2, but no other quantum numbers. These spin-2 excitations can be light or can…
Both inflationary and quintessence cosmologies require scalar fields which roll very slowly over cosmological time scales, and so typically demand extremely flat potentials. Sufficiently flat potentials are notoriously difficult to obtain…
Low-energy effective field theories containing a light scalar field are used extensively in cosmology, but often there is a tension between embedding such theories in a healthy UV completion and achieving a phenomenologically viable…
We study how to obtain a sufficiently flat inflaton potential that is natural from the particle physics point of view. Supersymmetry, which is broken during inflation, cannot protect the potential against non-renormalizable operators…
We show that it is not possible to UV-complete certain low-energy effective theories with spontaneously broken space-time symmetries by embedding them into linear sigma models, that is, by adding "radial" modes and restoring the broken…
Inspired by the structural unification of unitary groups (quantum field theory) with orthogonal groups (relativity) proposed recently through a non-division algebra, we construct a hypercomplex field theory with an internal symmetry that…
Extensions of the Standard Model and general relativity featuring a UV fixed point can leave observable implications at accessible energies. Although mass parameters such as the Planck scale can appear through dimensional transmutation, all…
Identifying the inflaton with a pseudo-Goldstone boson explains the flatness of its potential. Successful Goldstone Inflation should also be robust against UV corrections, such as from quantum gravity: in the language of the effective field…
There are indications that some theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking also feature a light scalar in their spectrum, with a mass comparable to the one of the Goldstone modes. In this paper, we perform the one-loop renormalization of a…
We demonstrate the extension to PT-symmetric field theories of the Goldstone theorem, confirming that the spontaneous appearance of a field vacuum expectation value via minimisation of the effective potential in a non-Hermitian model is…
A mechanism is presented through which very light scalar degrees of freedom obeying the nonlinear sigma model equation can emerge in spontaneously broken gauge theories. The mechanism operates in extra dimensional theories in which a) there…
Spontaneous Lorentz violation due to a time-dependent expectation value for a massless scalar has been suggested as a method for dynamically generating dark energy. A natural candidate for the scalar is a Goldstone boson arising from the…
We consider a model with a small explicit breaking of a global symmetry, as suggested by gravitational arguments. Our model has one scalar field transforming under a non-anomalous U(1) symmetry, and coupled lo matter and to gauge bosons.…