Journal of High Energy Physics (Aug 2020)

Renormalization and conformal invariance of non-local quantum electrodynamics

  • Matthew Heydeman,
  • Christian B. Jepsen,
  • Ziming Ji,
  • Amos Yarom

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2020)007
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2020, no. 8
pp. 1 – 39

Abstract

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Abstract We study renormalization group flow in a non-local version of quantum electrodynamics (QED). We determine the regime in which the theory flows to a local theory in the infrared and study a possible UV completion of four-dimensional QED. In addition, we find that there exist non-local conformal theories with a one-dimensional conformal manifold and non-local deformations of QED in three dimensions that are exactly marginal. Along the way we develop methods for coupling non-local derivatives to external sources and discuss unitarity and conformal vs. scale invariance of these theories.

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