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19S1 D. Anselmi
Theories of gravitation

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D. Anselmi
From Physics To Life

A journey to the infinitesimally small and back

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Archive for August 2014

The properties of quantum gravity are reviewed from the point of view of renormalization. Various attempts to overcome the problem of nonrenormalizability are presented, and the reasons why most of them fail for quantum gravity are discussed. Interesting possibilities come from relaxing the locality assumption, which can inspire the investigation of a largely unexplored sector of quantum field theory. Another possibility is to work with infinitely many independent couplings, and search for physical quantities that only depend on a finite subset of them. In this spirit, it is useful to organize the classical action of quantum gravity, determined by renormalization, in a convenient way. Taking advantage of perturbative local field redefinitions, we write the action as the sum of the Hilbert term, the cosmological term, a peculiar scalar that is important only in higher dimensions, plus invariants constructed with at least three Weyl tensors. We show that the FRLW configurations, and many other locally conformally flat metrics, are exact solutions of the field equations in arbitrary dimensions $d>3$. If the metric is expanded around such configurations the quadratic part of the action is free of higher-time derivatives. Other well-known metrics, such as those of black holes, are instead affected in nontrivial ways by the classical corrections of quantum origin.

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Mod. Phys. Lett. A 30 (2015) 1540004 | DOI: 10.1142/S0217732315400040

Course on renormalization, taught in 2015.

Last update: September 15th 20123, 242 pages

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Contents:

Preface

1. Functional integral

  • 1.1 Path integral
    • Schroedinger equation
    • Free particle
  • 1.2 Free field theory
  • 1.3 Perturbative expansion
    • Feynman rules
  • 1.4 Generating functionals, Schwinger-Dyson equations
  • 1.5 Advanced generating functionals
  • 1.6 Massive vector fields
  • 1.7 Fermions

2. Renormalization

  • 2.1 Dimensional regularization
    • 2.1.1 Limits and other operations in $D$ dimensions
    • 2.1.2 Functional integration measure
    • 2.1.3 Dimensional regularization for vectors and fermions
  • 2.2 Divergences and counterterms
  • 2.3 Renormalization to all orders
  • 2.4 Locality of counterterms
  • 2.5 Power counting
  • 2.6 Renormalizable theories
  • 2.7 Composite fields
  • 2.8 Maximum poles of diagrams
  • 2.9 Subtraction prescription
  • 2.10 Regularization prescription
  • 2.11 Comments about the dimensional regularization
  • 2.12 About the series resummation

3. Renormalization group

  • 3.1 The Callan-Symanzik equation
  • 3.2 Finiteness of the beta function and the anomalous dimensions
  • 3.3 Fixed points of the RG flow
  • 3.4 Scheme (in)dependence
  • 3.5 A deeper look into the renormalization group

4. Gauge symmetry

  • 4.1 Abelian gauge symmetry
  • 4.2 Gauge fixing
  • 4.3 Non-Abelian global symmetry
  • 4.4 Non-Abelian gauge symmetry

5. Canonical gauge formalism

  • 5.1 General idea behind the canonical gauge formalism
  • 5.2 Systematics of the canonical gauge formalism
  • 5.3 Canonical transformations
  • 5.4 Gauge fixing
  • 5.5 Generating functionals
  • 5.6 Ward identities

6. Quantum electrodynamics

  • 6.1 Ward identities
  • 6.2 Renormalizability of QED to all orders

7 Non-Abelian gauge field theories

  • 7.1 Renormalizability of non-Abelian gauge theories to all orders
    • Raw subtraction

A. Notation and useful formulas

The PDF of the 2015 edition is available here below.

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Book

14B1 D. Anselmi
Renormalization

Course on renormalization, taught in 2015.

Last update: September 15th 2023, 242 pages

The final (2023) edition is vaibable on Amazon:

US  IT  DE  FR  ES  UK  JP  CA


Contents:
Preface
1. Functional integral
2. Renormalization
3. Renormalization group
4. Gauge symmetry
5. Canonical formalism
6. Quantum electrodynamics
7. Non-Abelian gauge field theories
Notation and useful formulas
References


The pdf file of the 2015 Edition is available here: PDF