Course

19S1 D. Anselmi
Theories of gravitation

Program

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Book

D. Anselmi
From Physics To Life

A journey to the infinitesimally small and back

In English and Italian

Available on Amazon:
US: book | ebook  (in EN)
IT: book | ebook  (in IT)




Recent Papers




Fakeons

We study the running of power spectra in inflationary cosmology as a renormalization-group flow from the de Sitter fixed point. The beta function is provided by the equations of the background metric. The spectra of the scalar and tensor fluctuations obey RG evolution equations with vanishing anomalous dimensions in the superhorizon limit. By organizing the perturbative expansion in terms of leading and subleading logs, we calculate the spectral indices, their runnings, the runnings of the runnings, etc., to the next-to-leading log order in quantum gravity with fakeons (i.e., the theory $R+R^2+C^2$ with the fakeon prescription/projection for $C^2$). We show that these quantities are related to the spectra in a universal way. We also compute the first correction to the relation $r=−8n_T$ and provide a number of quantum gravity predictions that can be hopefully tested in the forthcoming future.

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J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 01 (2021) 048 | DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2021/01/048

arXiv: 2007.15023 [hep-th]

Testable predictions of quantum gravity with fakeons on the spectra of the CMB radiation

Based on the paper 20A3 Renorm (arXiv: 2006.01163 [hep-th])

Talk given online by M. Piva for the Tokyo Institute of Technology, on Jun 16th, 2020

Talk given online by Marco Piva for the University of Sussex, on July 20th, 2020

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Testable predictions of quantum gravity with fakeons on the spectra of the CMB radiation

Talk given by M. Piva at the National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Tallinn, Estonia, on Jun 9th, 2020

Based on the paper 20A3 Renorm (arXiv: 2006.01163 [hep-th])

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We formulate quantum field theories of massive fields of arbitrary spins. The presence of both physical and fake particles, organized into multiplets, makes it possible to fulfill the requirements of locality, unitarity and renormalizability at the same time. The theories admit cubic and quartic self-interactions and can be coupled to quantum gravity and gauge fields. The simplest irreducible bosonic and fermionic multiplets are made of towers of alternating physical and fake particles. Their mass spectrum is constrained by RG invariant relations and depends on just one or two masses. The fixed points of the renormalization-group flow are scale invariant, but not necessarily conformal invariant. The Palatini version of quantum gravity with fakeons is equivalent to the non-Palatini one coupled to a peculiar multiplet of order 3. As a consequence, it is equally renormalizable and unitary.

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J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2020) 176 | DOI: 10.1007/JHEP07(2020)176

arXiv: 2006.01163 [hep-th]

hal-03059929

We derive the predictions of quantum gravity with fakeons on the amplitudes and spectral indices of the scalar and tensor fluctuations in inflationary cosmology. The action is $R+R^{2}$ plus the Weyl-squared term. The ghost is eliminated by turning it into a fakeon, that is to say a purely virtual particle. We work to the next-to-leading order of the expansion around the de Sitter background. The consistency of the approach puts a lower bound ($m_{\chi }>m_{\phi }/4$) on the mass $m_{\chi }$ of the fakeon with respect to the mass $m_{\phi }$ of the inflaton. The tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ is predicted within less than an order of magnitude ($4/3 < N^{2}r<12$ to the leading order in the number of $e$-foldings $N$). Moreover, the relation $r\simeq -8n_{T}$ is not affected by the Weyl-squared term. No vector and no other scalar/tensor degree of freedom is present.

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J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2020) 211 | DOI: 10.1007/JHEP07(2020)211

arXiv: 2005.10293 [hep-th]

hal-03059912

The search for purely virtual quanta has attracted interest in the past. We consider various proposals and compare them to the concept of fake particle, or “fakeon”. In particular, the Feynman-Wheeler propagator, which amounts to using the Cauchy principal value inside Feynman diagrams, violates renormalizability, unitarity and stability, due to the coexistence of the prescriptions $\pm i\epsilon $. We contrast the Feynman, fakeon and Feynman-Wheeler prescriptions in ordinary as well as cut diagrams. The fakeon does not have the problems of the Feynman-Wheeler propagator and emerges as the correct concept of purely virtual quantum. It allows us to make sense of quantum gravity at the fundamental level, and places it on an equal footing with the standard model. The resulting theory of quantum gravity is perturbative up to an incredibly high energy.

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J. High Energ. Phys. 03 (2020) 142 | DOI: 10.1007/JHEP03(2020)142

arXiv: 2001.01942 [hep-th]

Talk given at Penn State University, Dec 17, 2019


A new quantization prescription is able to endow quantum field theory with a new type of “particle”, the fakeon (fake particle), which mediates interactions, but cannot be observed. A massive fakeon of spin 2 (together with a scalar field) allows us to build a theory of quantum gravity that is both renormalizable and unitary, and to some extent unique. The theory predicts that causality is lost at sufficiently small distances, where time makes no longer sense. After presenting the general formulation of the theory, I explain its nontrivial classical limit, the modifications of the FLRW metric and the role of the cosmological constant. Finally, I discuss the possibility that the Higgs boson might be a fakeon.

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Conferenza pubblica al pub “Lo spaventapasseri” di Pisa, il 28/11/2019 alle ore 20.00, sul tema della gravità quantistica

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The correspondence principle made of unitarity, locality and renormalizability has been very successful in quantum field theory. Among the other things, it helped us build the standard model. However, it also showed important limitations. For example, it failed to restrict the gauge group and the matter sector in a powerful way. After discussing its effectiveness, we upgrade it to make room for quantum gravity. The unitarity assumption is better understood, since it allows for the presence of physical particles as well as fake particles (fakeons). The locality assumption is applied to an interim classical action, since the true classical action is nonlocal and emerges from the quantization and a later process of classicization. The renormalizability assumption is refined to single out the special role of the gauge couplings. We show that the upgraded principle leads to an essentially unique theory of quantum gravity. In particular, in four dimensions, a fakeon of spin 2, together with a scalar field, is able to make the theory renormalizable while preserving unitarity. We offer an overview of quantum field theories of particles and fakeons in various dimensions, with and without gravity.

Proceedings of the conference Progress and Visions in Quantum Theory in View of Gravity: Bridging foundations of physics and mathematics, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, October 2018

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arXiv: 1911.10343 [hep-th]

OSF preprints | DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/kxj3r

Philpapers ANSFQG

Preprints 2019, 2019110321

Talk given at the conference “Quantum Gravity and Quantum Geometry“, Nijmegen Oct 29 – Nov 1, 2019


A new quantization prescription is able to endow quantum field theory with a new type of “particle”, the fakeon (fake particle), which mediates interactions, but cannot be observed. A massive fakeon of spin 2 (together with a scalar field) allows us to build a theory of quantum gravity that is both renormalizable and unitary, and to some extent unique. The theory predicts that causality is lost at sufficiently small distances, where time makes no longer sense. After formulating the theory, I explain its main properties. In particular: the nontrivial classical limit, the modifications of the FLRW metric and the roles of the cosmological constant and the Hubble constant.

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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