Monday, October 23, 2017

renormalization - Why do the counterterms in renormalized phi4-theory with power two in fields give vertices and not propagators?


I am reading Peskin and Schroeder, chapter ten, and my Lagrangian is L=12(μϕr)212m2ϕ2rλ4!z2ϕ4+12δZ(μϕr)212δmϕ2rδλ4!z2ϕ4.


It was my understanding that terms of power 2 in the fields always give Feynman rules that are propagators. However, it appears that the counterterms with power 2 in the fields give a Feynman rule looking like i(p2δzδm), instead of something with a denominator that would be more familiar. Like ip2m2+iϵ, from the first terms. Why is this the case? Is the idea that any term with power 2 in the fields gives a propagator wrong?



Answer



Consider ϕ4 theory: L=12Z1(ϕ)212Zmm2ϕ214!λ0ϕ4


There are two approaches to perturbation theory:


First


The propagator is given by Δ=1Z1p2Zmm2 and there is one type of vertex, with value iλ0


Second


The propagator is given by Δ=1p2m2 and there are two types of vertices, with value i((Z11)p2(Zm1)m2),iλ0



The two approaches are completely equivalent, and they give rise to the exact same expression for a given scattering process.


Note that the coefficients Z1,Zm depend on the expansion parameter λ. This means that the first approach is more cumbersome because it is in general not clear which diagrams contribute to a given order in perturbation theory, inasmuch as both the vertices and the propagators contain powers of λ. On the other hand, the second approach leads to more diagrams (because there is one more vertex) but it is more convenient (because the propagators are independent of λ).


No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...