Massive Galileon positivity bounds

• DOI: 10.1007/jhep09(2017)072
• Publication Date: 2017-09-18T23:05:54Z
• Authors: Claudia de Rham; Scott Melville; Andrew J. Tolley; Shuang-Yong Zhou
• Keywords: Global Symmetries; High Energy Physics - Theory; Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); gr-qc; Particles & Fields; FOS: Physical sciences; QC770-798; General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); SCATTERING-AMPLITUDES; 01 natural sciences; General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology; Physics, Particles & Fields; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); GRAVITY; Nuclear and particle physics. Atomic energy. Radioactivity; 0103 physical sciences; SPACE; Scattering Amplitudes; 01 Mathematical Sciences; Science & Technology; 02 Physical Sciences; Physics; hep-th; 500; hep-ph; Effective Field Theories; Cosmology of Theories beyond the SM; Nuclear & Particles Physics; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology; High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Physical Sciences; astro-ph.CO; BEHAVIOR; Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

The EFT coefficients in any gapped, scalar, Lorentz invariant field theory must satisfy positivity requirements if there is to exist a local, analytic Wilsonian UV completion. We apply these bounds to the tree level scattering amplitudes for a massive Galileon. The addition of a mass term, which does not spoil the non-renormalization theorem of the Galileon and preserves the Galileon symmetry at loop level, is necessary to satisfy the lowest order positivity bound. We further show that a careful choice of successively higher derivative corrections are necessary to satisfy the higher order positivity bounds. There is then no obstruction to a local UV completion from considerations of tree level 2-to-2 scattering alone. To demonstrate this we give an explicit example of such a UV completion.<br/>31 pages<br/>