Related papers: Causality, Analyticity and an IR Obstruction to UV…
We derive positivity bounds on low energy effective field theories which admit gapped, analytic, unitary, Lorentz invariant, and possibly non-local UV completions, by considering 2 to 2 scatterings of Jaffe fields whose…
We examine some features of the non-renormalizability induced through the use of low-energy effective Lagrangians in loop diagrams, in the context of a scalar model which is ultraviolet finite and partially soluble. In this framework, one…
Fundamental principles of local quantum field theory or of quantum gravity can enforce consistency requirements on the space of consistent low-energy effective field theories. We survey the various techniques that have been used to put UV…
We describe a UV complete asymptotically fragile Lorentz-invariant theory exhibiting superluminal signal propagation. Its low energy effective action contains "wrong" sign higher dimensional operators. Nevertheless, the theory gives rise to…
In nature, some UV features of dynamics are reflected in IR quantities. In fully relativistic theories, this connection can be probed through the analyticity properties of scattering amplitudes, allowing one to understand which IR theories…
We propose a picture for the UV properties of Galileon field theories. We conjecture that Galileons, and all theories incorporating the Vainshtein mechanism, fall into Jaffe's class of `non-localizable' field theories characterized by an…
Causality places nontrivial constraints on QFT in Lorentzian signature, for example fixing the signs of certain terms in the low energy Lagrangian. In d-dimensional conformal field theory, we show how such constraints are encoded in…
The string theory swampland proposes that there is no UV-completion for an effective field theory with an exact (metastable) de Sitter vacua, thereby ruling out standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology if the conjecture is taken seriously. The…
The idea that the existence of a consistent UV completion satisfying the fundamental axioms of local quantum field theory or string theory may impose positivity constraints on the couplings of the leading irrelevant operators in a…
Effective field theories that manifest UV/IR mode mixing in such a way as to be valid for arbitrarily large volumes, can be used for gravitational, non-black hole events to be accounted for. In formulating such theories with a large number…
It was argued that there are two different descriptions of the effective Lagrangian of gauge fields on D-branes by non-commutative gauge theory and by ordinary gauge theory in the presence of a constant B field background. In the case of…
Standard perturbation theory (SPT) for large-scale matter inhomogeneities is unsatisfactory for at least three reasons: there is no clear expansion parameter since the density contrast is not small on all scales; it does not fully account…
It is shown that the recently introduced positivity and causality preserving string-local quantum field theory (SLFT) resolves most No-Go situations in higher spin problems. This includes in particular the Velo-Zwanziger causality problem…
Nonrelativstic effective field theories have shown to be a useful framework to describe systems of weakly bound particles. This work focuses on the matching procedure to the underlying relativistic theory. The concept of a physical mass in…
Cardy's conjecture about the evolution of the trace anomaly under renormalization group (RG) flows is re-interpreted as an exact, non-perturbative statement about the scaling dimension of terms in the Lagrangian of the theory. When viewed…
Locality is a guiding principle for constructing realistic quantum field theories. Compactified theories offer an interesting context in which to think about locality, since interactions can be nonlocal in the compact directions while still…
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 certain small supersymmetry-breaking perturbations of a large class of strongly coupled four-dimensional R-symmetric renormalization group (RG) flows between superconformal field theories in the ultraviolet (UV) and the infrared…
From the ancient Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox to the recent Sorkin-type impossible measurements problem, the contradictions between relativistic causality, quantum non-locality, and quantum measurement have persisted. Based on quantum…
I briefly summarize a recent research program aiming to probe the landscape of low-energy phases of string theory from a global perspective. Borrowing conceptual lessons from the swampland program, I will discuss how the effective theories…