The modern view of renormalization has been shaped by Kadanoff and Wilson. See [114] and [234, 231, 232, 233] for first hand accounts and a guide to the original articles. In the present context the relevance of a Kadanoff–Wilson view on renormalization is two-fold: First it allows one to formulate the notion of renormalizability without reference to perturbation theory, and second it allows one to treat at least in principle renormalizable and non-renormalizable theories on the same footing. For convenience we briefly summarize the main principles of the Kadanoff–Wilson approach to renormalization here:
Kadanoff–Wilson view on renormalization – Main principles:
We first add some general remarks and then elaborate on the Points 1–6.
The more familar perturbative notion of renormalizability is neither sufficient (e.g. theory in
) nor necessary (e.g. Gross–Neveu model in
) for renormalizability in the above
sense.
As summarized here, these principles describe the construction of a so-called massive continuum limit of
a statistical field theory initially formulated on a lattice, say. A brief reminder: In a lattice field theory there
is typically a dynamically generated scale, the correlation length , which allows one to convert lattice
distances into a physical length scale, such that say,
lattice spacings equal
. The lattice points
are then traded for dimensionful distances
. Taking
the lattice spacing to zero amounts to sending
to infinity while keeping
fixed. If the
correlation functions of some lattice fields are rescaled accordingly (including a ‘wave function’
renormalization factor) and the limit exists, this defines a massive continuum limit of the lattice
theory.
Let us now elaborate on the various points. The comments are of a generic nature, whenever a formula is
needed to make the point, we consider the case of a scalar field theory on a -dimensional Euclidean
lattice with lattice spacing
and
. Then
denotes the scalar field multiplet at point
and
is its Fourier transform. We freely combine results and viewpoints from the following
reviews [102
, 21
, 77
, 146
, 111
].
Then
with TakingOnce Equation (A.2) has been evaluated one can iterate the procedure. The formulas (A.1
, A.2
)
remain valid with the basic kernel
replaced by its
-fold convolution product, for
which we write
. For most choices a kernel
will not be reproducing,
i.e.
will not (despite the suggestive
notation) coincide with the original kernel
, just with modified parameters. Technically it is
thus easier to specify the iterated kernel directly, which is of course still normalized. The
-fold
iterated kernel will have support mostly on configurations with
, if
, and
is the fraction of the momentum modes over which the functional integral has been
performed after
iterations. In the above terminology the critical problem (A.1
) has been
replaced by the sequence of subcritical problems (A.2
). In each iteration, referred to as
a coarse graining step defined by the kernel
, only a small fraction of the degrees
of freedom is integrated out. The action
at the cutoff scale
is called
the microsocopic (or bare) action, the
reached after integrating out the ‘fast’
modes in the range
is called the coarse grained action at scale
, and
similarly for the fields
. Note that the action
as a functional is defined
for all field configurations, though for the evaluation of Equation (A.1
) only
is
needed.
Throughout we shall follow the sloppy field theory convention that the coarse graining operates on the action. Of course what really gets updated is the functional measure
In the (lattice) regularized theory the decomposition of the measure into a flat reference measureUsing Equation (A.2) for the kernel
, one readily
gets the flow equation
For the sake of contradistinction let us already mention here another type of flow equations, which is formulated in terms of the generating functional for the vertex (1-PI) functions and which uses a mode suppression scheme rather than a coarse graining procedure, namely the effective average action. To set up a functional renormalization flow one does not specify the coarse graining flow by iteration of a 1-step kernel, but rather starts from a functional integral of the form
It differs from the standard one (formally) defining the generating functional for the connected correlation functions only by the presence of theThe parameters can be classified into essential and inessential ones. A parameter combination is
called inessential if the response of the bare Lagrangian to a change in it can be absorbed by a field
reparameterization. Explicitly the existence of an inessential parameter combination is signaled by the
fact that there exists (locally) a vector field
on coupling space such that
The number of commuting linearly independent vector fields with the property (A.8
) is a
characteristic of the Lagrangian, and as in [227] we shall assume that one can choose adapted
coordinates such that
,
. The remaining parameters
,
, are
called essential parameters or coupling constants. By definition they are such that
is a diffeomorphism. For convenience we also assume that they have been made dimensionless
(with respect to mass dimensions) by a redefinition
, if
is the mass
dimension of
. The dimensionless couplings then depend only on the ratio
and we
write
,
,
. Note that this affects the flow direction:
Decreasing
(increasing number of coarse graining steps) corresponds to increasing
. The
variable offset
is useful because by making it large it formally allows one to ask “where
a coarse graining trajectory comes from”. For large
the offset
can roughly be
identified with the (logarithm of the) renormalization point
used in perturbative quantum
field theory. Under the above conditions the parameter flow of the
will typically
decompose into an autonomous flow equation for the couplings and a non-autonomous
flow equation for the inessential parameters. That is
decomposes into
Certain inessential parameters are still allowed to ‘run’ at the fixed point of the couplings. As a
consequence the action with is not unique, rather the fixed point in the couplings
corresponds to a submanifold
of fixed point actions
. More precisely the class of field
redefinitions which commute with the given coarse graining operation will give rise to marginal
perturbations (see below) of the fixed point and typically the vector space spanned by
these marginal perturbations coincides with the tangent space of
at the fixed
point [77
]. In this case
is unique modulo reparameterization terms (like the ones
on the right-hand-side of Equation (A.3
)) and we shall refer to it as ‘the’ fixed point
action.
Most statistical field theories have at least one fixed point, the so-called Gaussian fixed point. This
means there exists a choice of field variables for which the fixed point action is quadratic in
the fields, i.e. only the
terms in Equation (A.4
) are nonzero. In a local field theory the fixed
point action will typically be local, here
, but more generally one
could allow for nonlocal ones, here e.g. with
smooth.
Given a fixed point and a coarse graining operation one can (under suitable regularity conditions) decompose the space of actions (the cone of measures) into a stable manifold and an unstable manifold. All actions in the stable manifold are driven into the fixed point. The set of points reached on a trajectory emanating from the fixed point is called the unstable manifold; any individual emanating trajectory is called a renormalized trajectory. The stable manifold is typically infinite-dimensional; this corresponds to the infinitely many interaction monomials that die out under the successive coarse graining. The dimension of the unstable manifold is of crucial importance because it determines the “degree of renormalizability”.
So far the entire discussion was for a fixed coarse graining operation, , say. All concepts (fixed
point, stable and unstable manifold, etc.) referred to a given
. If one now changes
, the
location of the fixed point will change in the given coordinate system provided by the essential
couplings. The set of points reached belongs to the critical manifold [77]. One aspect of universality is
that the rates of approach to the fixed point are typically independent of the choice of
. More generally all quantities defined through a scaling limit are expected to be
independent of the choice of
(within a certain class). Limitations may arise as follows. One
parametric families of coarse graining operations
may have ‘bifurcation points’ where the
dimension of
equals the number of independent marginal perturbations for
and is smaller for
. One expects the emergence of new fixed points (or
periodic cycles) at such bifurcation points. The physics interpretation of
may be the
(analytically continued) dimension of the system or the range of the interaction.
The significance of the stability matrix can be illustrated at the Gaussian fixed point.
If the fixed point action is not just quadratic in the fields but also local,
in Equation (A.4
), say, the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the
stability matrix reproduce the structure based on mass (or power counting) scaling dimensions. If one
adopts a parameterization where the local Gaussian fixed point is described by
, the
matrix (A.10
) has a set of right eigenvectors
whose eigenvalues are
, where
are the mass dimensions of the dimensionful couplings
. In the setting of
Equation (A.1
, A.2
) this amounts to the following. Consider a coarse graining transformation where
momenta in the range
are integrated out. To every monomial
with mass dimension
there corresponds an eigenoperator
whose highest dimensional element is
and the corresponding eigenvalue is
.
Here one can see directly that the monomials which are irrelevant with respect to a local
Gaussian fixed point (those which ‘die out’ under successive coarse graining operations) are
the ones with mass dimension
. For example with the conventions set after
Equation (A.4
) an
term has mass dimension
in
Euclidean
dimensions.
On the other hand the amount of information that can be extracted from the stability matrix is often
limited by the fact that it is degenerate. For illustration let us consider some simple examples. It is
convenient to consider the flow as a function of the off-set so that
is
the appropriate flow equation. Let us assume that (for reasons of positivity of energy,
say) the couplings are required to be non-negative. In the case of a single coupling, then
has the fixed point
, but with the upper sign the unstable manifold is
one-dimensional, while with the lower sign the unstable manifold is empty. Indeed the solution
is in the first case positive for all
and approaches the fixed point
for
, while with the lower sign the fixed point cannot be reached with positive
values of the coupling. Both are ‘paradigmatic’ situations mimicking the perturbative
behavior of a Yang–Mills coupling and a
coupling, respectively. Note that in both
cases the stability matrix (A.10
) vanishes identically, so the attempt to gain insight into
the unstable manifold via the linearized analysis already fails in this trivial example. A
multi-dimensional generalization is
, where the unstable manifold of the
fixed point
consists only of the halfline
,
(of co-dimension
).
An important case when a linearized analysis is insufficient is when the number of independent
marginal perturbations is larger than the dimension of the tanget space to (see the remark
at the end of Comment 4). One may then be able to enlarge the stable or the unstable manifold (or
both) by submanifolds of points which are driven towards or away from it with ‘vanishing
speed’.
Returning to the general discussion, a schematic pattern of a coarse graining flow in the vicinity of a
fixed point is shown in Figure 6. Individual flow lines
starting outside the stable manifold
will in general first approach the fixed point, without touching down, and then shoot away from it. In
order to (almost) touch down at the fixed point the initial values
have to be carefully fine
tuned. With ideal fine tuning the trajectory then splits into two parts. One part that moves within the
stable manifold into the fixed point and another part that emerges from it. The latter has the fixed
point couplings as its initial values,
, and is called a renormalized trajectory; with
repect to it the fixed point is an ultaviolet one. Its physics significance is that the actions
associated with points on the renormalized trajectory are perfect, in the sense that the effect of
the cutoff on observables is completely erased, even when the couplings are not close to
their fixed point values. More realistic than the construction of perfect actions is that of
improved actions, designed such that for given values of the couplings the cutoff effects are
systematically diminished (see [102] for further discussion). In order to identify a renormalized
trajectory the initial values
of the relevant couplings have to be fine tuned. A
statistical field theory for which this amounts to a manifestly finite-dimensional problem is
called strictly renormalizable in the ultraviolet, otherwise we suggest to call it weakly
renormalizable.
UV strict (weak) renormalizability:
Importantly this is a nonperturbative definition of renormalizability. The averages defined by
backtracing a perfect action along the renormalized trajectory into the fixed point have all
desirable properties: They are independent of the cutoff scale and independent of
all the irrelevant couplings, in the sense that they become computable functions of the
relevant couplings. Whenever the unstable manifold is well defined as a geometric object, its
dimension and structure is of course a coordinate independent notion. In practice the
existence of (patches of) the unstable manifold is only established retroactively once a
good ‘basis’ of interaction monomials
has been found. Then a large class of other
choices will be on an equal footing giving the concept a geometric flavor. The condition of
renormalizability as discussed so far only singles out a subclass of regularized (discretized)
statistical field theories. We shall outline below why and how this subclass can be used to
construct continuum quantum field systems with certain robustness properties. Before
turning to this we complete our list of comments on the Kadanoff–Wilson renormalization.
In the framework of statistical lattice field theories the importance of the construction principle 1 – 6 lies in the fact that it allows one to construct a scaling limit without introducing uncontrolled approximations. Usually this employs the concept of a correlation length and of the critical manifold as the locus of all points in the space of measures with infinite correlation length. In a gravitational context it is not obvious how to adapt this notion adequately, which is why we tried to avoid direct use of it, see the discussion at the end of Point 4. In statistical field theories a scaling limit is usually constructed in terms of multipoint functions of the basic fields. The lattice spacing is sent to zero while simultaneously the couplings are moved back into the fixed point along a renormalized trajectory. As mentioned before we are interested here in massive scaling limits, meaning that among the systems on the renormalized trajectory used only the one ‘at’ the fixed point is scale invariant. In the case of quantum gravity the multipoint functions of the basic fields might not be physical quantities, so the appropriate requirement is that a scaling limit exists for generic physical quantities (see Section 1.1).
Initially all concepts in the construction 1 – 6 refer to a choice of coarse graining operation. One aspect of universality is that all statistical field theories based on fixed points related by a change of coarse graining operation have the same scaling limit. One can thus refer to an equivalence class of scaling limits as a continuum limit. The construction then entails that whenever a continuum limit exists physical quantities become independent of the UV cutoff and of the choice of the coarse graining operation (within a certain class).
So far we did not presuppose unitarity/positivity of the resulting quantum field system. For a Euclidean statistical field theory, however, reflection positivity of the class of actions used provides an easily verifyable sufficient condition for the existence of a positive definite inner product on the physical state space of the theory. This is why relativistic unitary continuum quantum field theories (QFTs) can be constructed along the above lines in a way that does not require uncontrolled approximations from the outset. Of course the rigorous construction of a relativistic unitary QFT along these lines remains an extremely challenging problem and has only been achieved in a few cases. However numerical techniques often allow one to verify the renormalizability properties to good accuracy. The resulting QFT then is renormalizable in the above sense “for all practical purposes”; an example are Yang-Mills theories. As a consequence the extracted continuum physics will have the desired universal properties for all practical purposes likewise.
This concludes our ‘birds eye’ summary of basic renormalization group concepts. The concrete implementation in a given field theory quickly becomes fairly technical. A key problem is to obtain mathematical control over the scale dependencies and these are often extremely hard to come by (see e.g. [195]). Outside a dedicated group of specialists one usually resorts to uncontrolled approximations. In this review we do so likewise. First, because of the early stage in which the investigation of the ‘gravitational renormalization group’ is, and second, because also the controlled approximations – where they exist – often draw from experience gained from uncontrolled approximations.
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