Pith. sign in

REVIEW 3 cited by

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1908.04325 v4 pith:A2DSUGB5 submitted 2019-08-12 hep-th hep-ph

Conformality Loss, Walking, and 4D Complex Conformal Field Theories at Weak Coupling

classification hep-th hep-ph
keywords theorieswalkingcomplexconformalcouplingconformalitycontrolleddynamics
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Four-dimensional gauge theories with matter can have regions in parameter space, often dubbed conformal windows, where they flow in the infrared to non-trivial conformal field theories. It has been conjectured that conformality can be lost because of merging of two nearby fixed points that move into the complex plane, and that a walking dynamics governed by scaling dimensions of operators defined at such complex fixed points can occur. We find controlled, parametrically weakly coupled, and ultraviolet-complete 4D gauge theories that explicitly realize this scenario. We show how the walking dynamics is controlled by the coupling of a double-trace operator that crosses marginality. The walking regime ends when the renormalization group flow of this coupling leads to a (weak) first-order phase transition with Coleman-Weinberg symmetry breaking. A light dilaton-like scalar particle appears in the spectrum, but it is not parametrically lighter than the other excitations.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Exactly solvable non-unitary conformal interfaces in unitary CFTs

    cond-mat.stat-mech 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    An SL(2,C)-parametrized family of exactly solvable non-unitary conformal interfaces is constructed on the lattice in unitary CFTs via analytic continuation, leading to a non-unitary Cardy condition and logarithmic ent...

  2. Complex Conformal Manifolds

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Analytic continuation of marginal couplings produces complex CFTs, with no genuinely complex rational CFTs existing, and exact defect results verified in non-Hermitian Ising and fermion chains.

  3. Moduli Spaces in CFT: Large Charge Operators

    hep-th 2024-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    CFTs with broken continuous global symmetry on the moduli space require a tower of charged local operators whose scaling dimensions are asymptotically linear in the charge.