Spontaneous Conformal Symmetry Breaking in the Fishnet CFT

Abstract: Quantum field theories with exact but spontaneously broken conformal invariance have an intriguing feature: their vacuum energy is equal to zero. Up to now, the only known ultraviolet complete theories where conformal symmetry can be spontaneously broken were associated with supersymmetry, with the most prominent example being the N =4 SYM. Interestingly, its non-supersymmetric descendant, the ``Fishnet theory,'' supports at the classical level a rich set of flat directions along which conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken. At least perturbatively, some of these vacua survive in the full quantum theory - in the planar limit - without any fine tuning. As a result, the vacuum energy vanishes along these flat directions, providing the first non-supersymmetric example of a four-dimensional quantum field theory with “natural” breaking of conformal symmetry.

general relativity and quantum cosmologyHEP - latticeHEP - phenomenologyHEP - theorymathematical physics

Audience: researchers in the topic

High Energy Theory, Gravity and Cosmology Seminars @ NTUA