Mingling of the infrared and ultraviolet and the "cosmological constant" for interacting QFT in 2d

Abstract

We propose a proper definition of the vacuum expectation value of the stress energy tensor $\langle 0 | T_{μν} |0 \rangle$ for integrable quantum field theories in two spacetime dimensions, which is the analog of the cosmological constant in 4d. For a wide variety of models, massive or massless, we show $ρ_{\rm vac} = - m^2/2 \mathfrak{g} $ exactly, where $\mathfrak{g} $ is a generalized coupling which we compute and $m$ is a basic mass scale. The kinds of models we consider are the massive sinh-Gordon and sine-Gordon theories and perturbations of the Yang-Lee and 3-state Potts models, pure $T\bar{T}$ perturbations of infra-red QFT's, and UV completions of the latter which are massless flows between UV and IR fixed points. In the massive case $m$ is the mass of the lightest particle and $\mathfrak{g} $ is related to parameters in the 2-body S-matrix. In some examples $ρ_{\rm vac} =0$ due to an unbroken fractional supersymmetry. For massless cases, $m$ can be a scale of spontaneous symmetry breaking. The "cosmological constant problem" generically arises in the free field limit $\mathfrak{g} \to 0$, thus interactions can potentially resolve the problem at least for most cases considered in this paper. We speculate on extensions of these results to 4 spacetime dimensions and propose $ρ_{\rm vac} =- m^4/2 \mathfrak{g}$,however without integrability we cannot yet propose a precise manner in which to calculate $\mathfrak{g}$. Nevertheless, based on cosmological data on $ρ_{\rm vac} $, if $\mathfrak{g} \approx 1$ then the lightest mass particle is on the order of experimental values of proposed neutrino masses.