Abstract
I explore the implications of promoting nonconformal scale-invariant theories to conformal theories by nonlinearly realizing the missing symmetry. Properties of the associated Nambu-Goldstone mode imply that conformal invariance cannot be spontaneously broken to scale invariance in unitary theories and that, as well known, scale invariant unitary theories in two dimensions are also conformal. The promoted theories have only conformal primaries and no descendants. The (non) decoupling of the Nambu-Goldstone mode is explicitly shown in examples of scale invariant theories that are actually (not) conformal.
- Received 27 December 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.061701
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society