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We study the interaction of two discrete pomeron fields while considering mass mixing and the general structure of the interaction potential for pomerons within the framework for a functional renormalization group analysis of Reggeon field theory. We find fixed points from the zeros of the beta function establishing the existence of three groups of solutions: the first corresponds to two uncoupled pomerons, the second is a solution known as a "pomeron–odderon" interaction, and the final is a real general solution with an interaction potential. We also study its universal properties around this fixed point. This analysis allows for a discussion for the first time on the mixing of two pomerons through renormalization flow paths from the ultraviolet to the non-perturbative infrared regions. Finally, we comment on its role in high-energy scattering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anomalous scaling of Newton's constant around the Reuter fixed point is dynamically computed using the functional flow equation approach. Specifically, we thoroughly analyze the flow of the most general conformally reduced Einstein-Hilbert action. Our findings reveal that, due to the distinctive nature of gravity, the anomalous dimension η of the Newton's constant cannot be constrained to have one single value: the ultraviolet critical manifold is characterized by a line of fixed points (g⁎(η),λ⁎(η)), with a discrete (infinite) set of eigenoperators associated to each fixed point. More specifically, we find three ranges of η corresponding to different properties of both fixed points and eigenoperators and, in particular, for the range η

We study the interaction of two discrete pomeron fields while considering mass mixing and the general structure of the interaction potential for pomerons within the framework for a functional renormalization group analysis of Reggeon field theory. We find fixed points from the zeros of the beta function establishing the existence of three groups of solutions: the first corresponds to two uncoupled pomerons, the second is a solution known as a “pomeron–odderon” interaction, and the final is a real general solution with an interaction potential. We also study its universal properties around this fixed point. This analysis allows for a discussion for the first time on the mixing of two pomerons through renormalization flow paths from the ultraviolet to the non-perturbative infrared regions. Finally, we comment on its role in high-energy scattering.

Wetterich's equation provides a powerful tool for investigating the existence and universal properties of renormalization group fixed points exhibiting quantum scale invariance. Motivated by recent works on asymptotically safe scalar-tensor theories, we develop a novel approximation scheme which projects the functional renormalization group equation onto functions of the kinetic term. Applying this projection to scalars and gauge fields, our analysis identifies a new universality class with a very special spectrum of stability coefficients. The implications of our findings in the context of asymptotically safe gravity-matter systems are discussed.

Recent progress in studies on quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phase transition and related critical phenomena within the functional renormalization group (fRG) approach were reviewed, including the nonperturbative critical exponents and baryon number fluctuations, which are pertinent to the critical end point (CEP) in the QCD phase diagram. The fRG is a nonperturbative continuum field approach, in which quantum thermal fluctuations are successively integrated with the evolution of the renormalization group (RG) scale. Different methods of finding solutions to the flow or fixed-point equations of a nonperturbative effective potential have been discussed, for example, the Taylor expansion, expansion of the spatial dimension ε=4-d, and the recently proposed direct solution of the global potential. Furthermore, the baryon number of fluctuations is relevant to the critical phenomena of the CEP. Both have been discussed, and one explores the underlying reasons for the observed non-monotonic dependence of the kurtosis of the net proton number of distributions on collision energy in experiments.

The functional renormalization group equations are derived in Minkowski space–time for scalar models. It is shown that the couplings become complex, which can change the fixed point structure. New phases appear, and the models can build up complex fixed points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We elucidate the regulator-sourced 2PI and average 1PI approaches for deriving exact flow equations in the case of a zero dimensional quantum field theory, wherein the scale dependence of the usual renormalisation group evolution is replaced by a simple parametric dependence. We show that both approaches are self-consistent, while highlighting key differences in their behaviour and the structure of the would-be loop expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the functional renormalization group equation for the effective average action to study the fixed point structure of gravity-fermion systems on a curved background spacetime. We approximate the effective average action by the Einstein-Hilbert action supplemented by a fermion kinetic term and a coupling of the fermion bilinears to the spacetime curvature. The latter interaction is singled out based on a “smart truncation building principle”. The resulting renormalization group flow possesses two families of interacting renormalization group fixed points extending to any number of fermions. The first family exhibits an upper bound on the number of fermions for which the fixed points could provide a phenomenologically interesting high-energy completion via the asymptotic safety mechanism. The second family comes without such a bound. The inclusion of the non-minimal gravity-matter interaction is crucial for discriminating the two families. Our work also clarifies the origin of the strong regulator-dependence of the fixed point structure reported in earlier literature and we comment on the relation of our findings to studies of the same system based on a vertex expansion of the effective average action around a flat background spacetime.

Background Independence is a sine qua non for every satisfactory theory of Quantum Gravity. If one tries to establish a corresponding notion of Wilsonian renormalization, or coarse graining, it presents a major conceptual and technical difficulty usually. In this paper, we adopt the approach of the gravitational Effective Average Action and demonstrate that, generically, coarse graining in Quantum Gravity and in standard field theories on a non-dynamical spacetime are profoundly different. By means of a concrete example, which, in connection with the cosmological constant problem, is also interesting in its own right, we show that the surprising and sometimes counterintuitive implications of Background Independent coarse graining are neither restricted to high energies nor to strongly non-perturbative regimes. In fact, while our approach has been employed in most studies of Asymptotic Safety, this particular ultraviolet behavior plays no essential role in the present context.

We consider a functional relation between a given Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) flow, which has to be related to a specific coarse-graining procedure, and an infinite family of (UV cutoff) scale-dependent field redefinitions. Within this framework, one can define a family of Wilsonian proper-time (PT) exact RG equations associated to an arbitrary regulator function. New applications of these RG flow schemes to the Ising Universality class in three dimensions in the derivative expansion are shortly illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The renormalization group flow of the chiral Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with one fermion flavor is mapped out in the symmetric phase with help of the Functional Renormalization Group (FRG) method using a physically motivated nonlocal trial effective action. The non-interacting infrared end-point of the flow of the four-fermion couplings is now accompanied by nonzero limiting composite couplings characteristic for interacting two-particle states with finite energy and physical size. The interaction energy of the constituents is extracted as a function of the physical size of the composite object. The propagation of a two-particle state minimizing the interaction energy has a natural bound state interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We set up a consistent background field formalism for studying the renormalization group (RG) flow of gravity coupled to Nf Dirac fermions on maximally symmetric backgrounds. Based on Wetterich’s equation, we perform a detailed study of the resulting fixed point structure in a projection including the Einstein–Hilbert action, the fermion anomalous dimension, and a specific coupling of the fermion bilinears to the spacetime curvature. The latter constitutes a mass-type term that breaks chiral symmetry explicitly. Our analysis identified two infinite families of interacting RG fixed points, which are viable candidates to provide a high-energy completion through the asymptotic safety mechanism. The fixed points exist for all values of Nf outside of a small window situated at low values Nf and become weakly coupled in the large Nf-limit. Symmetry-wise, they correspond to “quasi-chiral” and “non-chiral” fixed points. The former come with enhanced predictive power, fixing one of the couplings via the asymptotic safety condition. Moreover, the interplay of the fixed points allows for cross-overs from the non-chiral to the chiral fixed point, giving a dynamical mechanism for restoring the symmetry approximately at intermediate scales. Our discussion of chiral symmetry breaking effects provides strong indications that the topology of spacetime plays a crucial role when analyzing whether quantum gravity admits light chiral fermions.

For decades, frustrated quantum magnets have been a seed for scientific progress and innovation in condensed matter. As much as the numerical tools for low-dimensional quantum magnetism have thrived and improved in recent years due to breakthroughs inspired by quantum information and quantum computation, higher-dimensional quantum magnetism can be considered as the final frontier, where strong quantum entanglement, multiple ordering channels, and manifold ways of paramagnetism culminate. At the same time, efforts in crystal synthesis have induced a significant increase in the number of tangible frustrated magnets which are generically three-dimensional in nature, creating an urgent need for quantitative theoretical modeling. We review the pseudo-fermion (PF) and pseudo-Majorana (PM) functional renormalization group (FRG) and their specific ability to address higher-dimensional frustrated quantum magnetism. First developed more than a decade ago, the PFFRG interprets a Heisenberg model Hamiltonian in terms of Abrikosov pseudofermions, which is then treated in a diagrammatic resummation scheme formulated as a renormalization group flow of m -particle pseudofermion vertices. The article reviews the state of the art of PFFRG and PMFRG and discusses their application to exemplary domains of frustrated magnetism, but most importantly, it makes the algorithmic and implementation details of these methods accessible to everyone. By thus lowering the entry barrier to their application, we hope that this review will contribute towards establishing PFFRG and PMFRG as the numerical methods for addressing frustrated quantum magnetism in higher spatial dimensions., (Creative Commons Attribution license.)

Considering the scale-dependent effective spacetimes implied by the functional renormalization group in d-dimensional quantum Einstein gravity, we discuss the representation of entire evolution histories by means of a single, (d+1)-dimensional manifold furnished with a fixed (pseudo-) Riemannian structure. This “scale-spacetime” carries a natural foliation whose leaves are the ordinary spacetimes seen at a given resolution. We propose a universal form of the higher dimensional metric and discuss its properties. We show that, under precise conditions, this metric is always Ricci flat and admits a homothetic Killing vector field; if the evolving spacetimes are maximally symmetric, their (d+1)-dimensional representative has a vanishing Riemann tensor even. The non-degeneracy of the higher dimensional metric that “geometrizes” a given RG trajectory is linked to a monotonicity requirement for the running of the cosmological constant, which we test in the case of asymptotic safety.

Equivalence criteria are established for an effective Yukawa-type theory of composite fields representing two-particle fermion bound states with the original "microscopic" theory of interacting fermions based on the spectral decomposition of the 2-to-2 fermion scattering amplitude. Functional renormalization group equations of the effective theory are derived exploiting relations expressing the equivalence. The effect of truncating the spectral decomposition is investigated quantitatively on the example of the nonrelativistic bound states of two oppositely charged fermions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have treated the Euclidean three-dimensional O(1) ghost model with a modified version of the effective average action (EAA) renormalization group (RG) method, developed by us. We call it Fourier–Wetterich RG approach and it is used to investigate the occurrence of a periodic condensate in terms of the functional RG. The modification involves additional terms in the ansatz of the EAA, corresponding to the Fourier-modes of the periodic condensate. The RG flow equations are derived keeping the terms up to the fourth order of the gradient expansion (GE), however the numerical calculations are conducted in the second order (or next-to-leading order, NLO) of the GE. The expansion of the flow equations around the nontrivial minimum of the local potential takes into account properly the vertices induced by the periodic condensate even if the wave function renormalization is set to be field-independent. The numerical analysis reveals several different phases with three multicritical points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of quantum simulations in ultra-cold atomic gases has been remarkably successful. In principle it allows for an exact treatment of a variety of highly relevant lattice models and their emergent phases of matter. But so far there is a lack in the theoretical literature concerning the systematic study of the effects of the trap potential as well as the finite size of the systems, as numerical studies of such non periodic, correlated fermionic lattices models are numerically demanding beyond one dimension. We use the recently introduced real-space truncated unity functional renormalization group to study these boundary and trap effects with a focus on their impact on the superconducting phase of the 2D Hubbard model. We find that in the experiments not only lower temperatures need to be reached compared to current capabilities, but also system size and trap potential shape play a crucial role to simulate emergent phases of matter.

The anomalous scaling of Newton's constant around the Reuter fixed point is dynamically computed using the functional flow equation approach. Specifically, we thoroughly analyze the flow of the most general conformally reduced Einstein-Hilbert action. Our findings reveal that, due to the distinctive nature of gravity, the anomalous dimension η of the Newton's constant cannot be constrained to have one single value: the ultraviolet critical manifold is characterized by a line of fixed points (g ⁎ (η) , λ ⁎ (η)) , with a discrete (infinite) set of eigenoperators associated to each fixed point. More specifically, we find three ranges of η corresponding to different properties of both fixed points and eigenoperators and, in particular, for the range η < η c ≈ 0.96 the ultraviolet critical manifolds has finite dimensionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a method to evaluate the steady-state non-equilibrium Keldysh–Schwinger Green’s functions for infinite systems subject to both an electric field and a coupling to reservoirs. The method we present exploits a physical quasi-translation invariance, where a shift by one unit cell leaves the physics invariant if all electronic energies are simultaneously shifted by the magnitude of the electric field. Our framework is straightaway applicable to diagrammatic many-body methods. We discuss two flagship applications, mean-field theories as well as a sophisticated second-order functional renormalization group approach. The latter allows us to push the renormalization-group characterization of phase transitions for lattice fermions into the out-of-equilibrium realm. We exemplify this by studying a model of spinless fermions, which in equilibrium exhibits a Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless phase transition.

Although the functional renormalization group (fRG) is by now a well-established method for investigating correlated electron systems, it is still undergoing significant technical and conceptual improvements. In particular, the motivation to optimally exploit the parallelism of modern computing platforms has recently led to the development of the “truncated-unity” functional renormalization group (TU-fRG). Here, we review this fRG variant, and we provide its extension to multiband systems with spin-orbit coupling. Furthermore, we discuss some aspects of the implementation and outline opportunities and challenges ahead for predicting the ground-state ordering and emergent energy scales for a wide class of quantum materials.

We revisit the construction of the gravitational functional renormalization group equation tailored to the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner formulation emphasizing its connection to the covariant formulation. The results obtained from projecting the renormalization group flow onto the Einstein-Hilbert action are reviewed in detail and we provide a novel example illustrating how the formalism may be connected to the causal dynamical triangulations approach to quantum gravity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We use the functional renormalization group equation for the effective average action to study the non-Gaussian renormalization group fixed points (NGFPs) arising within the framework of f (R) -gravity minimally coupled to an arbitrary number of scalar, Dirac, and vector fields. Based on this setting we provide comprehensible estimates whose gravity–matter systems give rise to NGFPs suitable for rendering the theory asymptotically safe. The analysis employs an exponential split of the metric fluctuations and retains a 7-parameter family of coarse-graining operators allowing the inclusion of non-trivial endomorphisms in the regularization procedure. For vanishing endomorphisms, it is established that gravity coupled to the matter content of the standard model of particle physics and many beyond the standard model extensions exhibit NGFPs whose properties are strikingly similar to the case of pure gravity: there are two UV-relevant directions and the position and critical exponents converge rapidly when higher powers of the scalar curvature are included. Conversely, none of the phenomenologically interesting gravity–matter systems exhibits a stable NGFP when a Type II coarse graining operator is employed. Our analysis resolves this tension by demonstrating that the NGFPs seen in the two settings belong to different universality classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-Newtonian expansions are introduced for scalar quantum field theories and classical gravity. They expand around a limiting theory that evolves only in time while the spatial points are dynamically decoupled. Higher orders of the expansion re-introduce spatial interactions and produce overlapping lightcones from the limiting isolated world line evolution. In scalar quantum field theories, the limiting system consists of copies of a self-interacting quantum mechanical system. In a spatially discretized setting, a nonlinear “graph transform„ arises that produces an in principle exact solution of the Functional Renormalization Group for the Legendre effective action. The quantum mechanical input data can be prepared from its 1 + 0 dimensional counterpart. In Einstein gravity, the anti-Newtonian limit has no dynamical spatial gradients, yet remains fully diffeomorphism invariant and propagates the original number of degrees of freedom. A canonical transformation (trivialization map) is constructed, in powers of a fractional inverse of Newton’s constant, that maps the ADM action into its anti-Newtonian limit. We outline the prospects of an associated trivializing flow in the quantum theory.

We review the study of the scaling properties of geometric operators, such as the geodesic length and the volume of hypersurfaces, in the context of the Asymptotic Safety scenario for quantum gravity. We discuss the use of such operators and how they can be embedded in the effective average action formalism. We report the anomalous dimension of the geometric operators in the Einstein–Hilbert truncation via different approximations by considering simple extensions of previous studies.

In the functional renormalization group (FRG), the introduction of a momentum cutoff often breaks symmetry present in a theory. The most important example is the gauge symmetry. However a symmetry survives in the presence of a cutoff in a modified form. We apply our understanding to QED as the simplest case. A modified version of the Ward-Takahashi identity is solved partially to constrain the Wilson action. Furthermore, we study the flow equation for the photon 2-point function and find its analytical expression for the regulator function of the exponential type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of an isotropic tricritical Lifshitz point for the O ( N ) scalar theory is investigated at large N in the improved Local Potential Approximation (LPA′) by means of the Functional Renormalization Group equations. At leading order, the non-trivial Lifshitz point is observed if the number of dimensions d is taken between d = 4 and d = 8 , and the eigenvalue spectrum of the associated eigendirections is derived. At order 1 / N of the LPA′ the anomalous dimension η N is computed and it is found to vanish both in d = 4 and d = 8 . The dependence of our findings on the infrared regulator is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional renormalization group (FRG) methods applied to calculations of isospin-symmetric and asymmetric nuclear matter as well as neutron matter are reviewed. The approach is based on a chiral Lagrangian expressed in terms of nucleon and meson degrees of freedom as appropriate for the hadronic phase of QCD with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry. Fluctuations beyond mean-field approximation are treated solving Wetterich’s FRG flow equations. Nuclear thermodynamics and the nuclear liquid–gas phase transition are investigated in detail, both in symmetric matter and as a function of the proton fraction in asymmetric matter. The equations of state at zero temperature of symmetric nuclear matter and pure neutron matter are found to be in good agreement with advanced ab-initio many-body computations. Contacts with perturbative many-body approaches (in-medium chiral perturbation theory) are discussed. As an interesting test case, the density dependence of the pion mass in the medium is investigated. The question of chiral symmetry restoration in nuclear and neutron matter is addressed. A stabilization of the phase with spontaneously broken chiral symmetry is found to persist up to high baryon densities once fluctuations beyond mean-field are included. Neutron star matter including beta equilibrium is discussed under the aspect of the constraints imposed by the existence of two-solar-mass neutron stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional renormalization group (FRG) equations are constructed for a simple Yukawa-model with discrete chiral symmetry, including also the effect of a nonzero composite fermion background beyond the conventional scalar condensate. The evolution of the effective potential of the model, generically depending on two invariants, is explored with the help of power series expansions. Systematic investigation of the effect of a class of irrelevant operators on the lower (stability) bound allows a non-perturbative extension of the maximal cutoff value consistent with any given mass of the scalar field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]