Decoupling a fermion whose mass comes from a Yukawa coupling: Nonperturbative considerations

Journal Article · Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 EST 1992 · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.46.4016· OSTI ID:6972796

Banks, T; Dabholkar, A ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08855-0849 (United States)

Perturbative analyses seem to suggest that fermions whose mass comes solely from a Yukawa coupling to a scalar field can be made arbitrarily heavy, while the scalar remains light. The effects of the fermion can be summarized by a local effective Lagrangian for the light degrees of freedom. Using weak coupling and large-{ital N} techniques, we present a variety of models in which this conclusion is shown to be false when nonperturbative variations of the scalar field are considered. The heavy fermions contribute nonlocal terms to the effective action for light degrees of freedom. This resolves paradoxes about anomalous and nonanomalous symmetry violation in these models. The application of these results to lattice gauge theory implies that attempts to decouple lattice fermion doublers by the method of Swift and Smit cannot succeed, a result already suggested by lattice calculations.

• DOE Contract Number: FG05-90ER40559
• OSTI ID: 6972796
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (United States), Vol. 46:9; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
FERMIONS
MASS
COUPLING
DECOUPLING
GAUGE INVARIANCE
HIGGS BOSONS
LAGRANGIAN FUNCTION
LATTICE FIELD THEORY
PERTURBATION THEORY
SCALAR FIELDS
SU-3 GROUPS
SYMMETRY BREAKING
VACUUM STATES
YUKAWA POTENTIAL
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FIELD THEORIES
FUNCTIONS
INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES
LIE GROUPS
NUCLEAR POTENTIAL
POSTULATED PARTICLES
POTENTIALS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
SU GROUPS
SYMMETRY GROUPS
662110* - General Theory of Particles & Fields- Theory of Fields & Strings- (1992-)
662120 - General Theory of Particles & Fields- Symmetry
Conservation Laws
Currents & Their Properties- (1992-)