Center for Theoretical Physics

We use the factorization constraints of open-closed string field theory to determine the signs and normalizations of general string amplitudes with both open and closed string external states. The normalization of all amplitudes is controlled by the genus, the number of boundaries, the number of open and closed string insertions, the string coupling and the D-brane tension. The challenge with signs arises because the relevant moduli spaces are not complex manifolds and have no obvious orientation. We deal with this by fixing a specific convention for the sign of the integration measure over the moduli space and adopting a consistent prescription for the ordering of operators and ghost insertions inside correlators.

The properties of the Higgs potential are determined by three parameters: the mass parameter, the quartic self-coupling, and a constant term. Remarkably, all three of these parameters seem subject to a significant amount of fine-tuning. All these tunings can be seen as their corresponding parameters being close to critical values marking quantum phase transitions. While such behavior is surprising from a conventional particle physics perspective, it is a common feature of dynamical systems. This has motivated the conjecture that the values of the Higgs' parameters are the result of some dynamical mechanism. This possibility suggests the construction of mechanisms dynamically choosing sets of Higgs parameters. In these notes, I discuss a complementary approach. Taking seriously that such a mechanism could exist in nature, it is plausible to assume that it also influences Beyond-Standard-Model physics. This suggests considering near-criticality in any model of interest and investigating its consequences more generally, in particular independent of a concrete mechanism responsible for it. I first explain what it means for the parameters of the Higgs potential to be near-critical. This includes a discussion of the recently discovered "metastability bound" on the Higgs mass, which can be understood through a critical point. I then review two concrete examples of mechanisms in which the parameters of the Higgs potential are dynamically driven towards critical values. These mechanisms also serve as an important proof on concept for the feasibility of the assumptions at the foundation of these notes. Using a simple example for concreteness, the final part of these notes then explicitly demonstrates how to approach a given model in the light of the near-criticality conjecture.

It has been shown that entropy differences between certain states of perturbative quantum gravity can be computed without specifying an ultraviolet completion. This is analogous to the situation in classical statistical mechanics, where entropy differences are defined but absolute entropy is not. Unlike in classical statistical mechanics, however, the entropy differences computed in perturbative quantum gravity do not have a clear physical interpretation. Here we construct a family of perturbative black hole states for which the entropy difference can be interpreted as a relative counting of states. Conceptually, this paper begins with the algebra of mass fluctuations around a fixed black hole background, and points out that while this is a type I algebra, it is not a factor and therefore has no canonical definition of entropy. As in previous work, coupling the mass fluctuations to quantum matter embeds the mass algebra within a type II factor, in which entropy differences (but not absolute entropies) are well defined. It is then shown that for microcanonical wavefunctions of mass fluctuation, the type II entropy difference equals the logarithm of the dimension of the extra Hilbert space that is needed to map one microcanonical window to another using gauge-invariant unitaries. The paper closes with comments on type II entropy difference in a more general class of states, where the von Neumann entropy difference does not have a physical interpretation, but "one-shot" entropy differences do.

X-space schemes are gauge-invariant, regulator-independent renormalization schemes that are defined by requiring position-space correlation functions of gauge invariant operators to be equal to their noninteracting values at particular kinematic points. These schemes can be used to nonperturbatively renormalize composite operators in Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (LQCD), and by computing matching coefficients between the X-space scheme and MSbar in the dimensionally-regulated continuum, matrix elements calculated with LQCD can be converted to MSbar-renormalized matrix elements. Using X-space schemes for Heavy Quark Effective Theory (HQET) operators has the additional benefit that appropriate ratios of position-space correlation functions cancel the power divergent static-quark self-energy of Lattice HQET nonperturbatively. This work presents the O(\(\alpha_S\)) matching coefficients between X-space renormalized four-quark flavor-nonsinglet HQET operators relevant for the lifetimes of charm- and bottom-hadrons, and four-quark HQET operators relevant for mixing between neutral mesons containing a heavy quark, such as B-Bbar mixing.