Narrow Results

It has been shown that the negative norm states necessarily appear in a covariant quantization of the free minimally coupled scalar field in de Sitter space.^1,2 In this process, ultraviolet and infrared divergences have been automatically eliminated.³ A natural renormalization of the one-loop interacting quantum field in Minkowski spacetime (λϕ⁴ theory) has been achieved through the consideration of the negative norm states.⁴ The one-loop effective action for scalar field in a general curved space-time has been calculated by this method, and a natural renormalization procedure in the one-loop approximation has been established.

The present note summarizes the discourse on power counting issues of chiral nuclear forces, with an emphasis on renormalization-group invariance. Given its introductory nature, I will lean toward narrating a coherent point of view on the concepts, rather than covering comprehensively the development of chiral nuclear forces in different approaches.

Effective field theories are the most general tool for the description of low energy phenomena. They are universal and systematic: they can be formulated for any low energy systems we can think of and offer a clear guide on how to calculate predictions with reliable error estimates, a feature that is called power counting. These properties can be easily understood in Wilsonian renormalization, in which effective field theories are the low energy renormalization group evolution of a more fundamental — perhaps unknown or unsolvable — high energy theory. In nuclear physics they provide the possibility of a theoretically sound derivation of nuclear forces without having to solve quantum chromodynamics explicitly. However there is the problem of how to organize calculations within nuclear effective field theory: the traditional knowledge about power counting is perturbative but nuclear physics is not. Yet power counting can be derived in Wilsonian renormalization and there is already a fairly good understanding of how to apply these ideas to non-perturbative phenomena and in particular to nuclear physics. Here we review a few of these ideas, explain power counting in two-nucleon scattering and reactions with external probes and hint at how to extend the present analysis beyond the two-body problem.

The ground state of a many body Hamiltonian considered in the quasiparticle representation is redefined by accounting for the quasiparticle quadrupole pairing interaction. The residual interaction of the newly defined quasiparticles is treated by the quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA). Solutions of the resulting equations exhibit specific features. In particular, there is no interaction strength where the first root is vanishing. A comparison with other renormalization methods is presented. Application to a single $j$-shell allows for the results interpretation by comparing them with those obtained by exact calculations.