Renormalising the field-space geometry
Patrick Aigner (Technische Universität München, Physik-Department, James-Franck-Strasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany); Luigi Bellafronte (Physics Department, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-4350, USA)
; Emanuele Gendy (Technische Universität München, Physik-Department, James-Franck-Strasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany)
; Dominik Haslehner (Technische Universität München, Physik-Department, James-Franck-Strasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Boltzmannstrasse 8, Garching, 85748, Germany)
; Andreas Weiler (Technische Universität München, Physik-Department, James-Franck-Strasse 1, Garching, 85748, Germany)![]()
We present a systematic study of one-loop quantum corrections in scalar effective field theories from a geometric viewpoint, emphasizing the role of field-space curvature and its renormalisation. By treating the scalar fields as coordinates on a Riemannian manifold, we exploit field redefinition invariance to maintain manifest coordinate independence of physical observables. Focusing on the non-linear sigma model (NLSM) and $\textit{ϕ}$ theory, we demonstrate how loop corrections induce momentum- and scale-dependent shifts in the curvature of the field-space manifold. These corrections can be elegantly captured through the recently proposed geometry-kinematics duality, which generalizes the colour-kinematics duality in gauge theories to curved field-space backgrounds. Our results highlight a universal structure emerging in the contractions of Riemann tensors that contribute to renormalisation of the field-space curvature. In particular, we find explicit expressions and a universal structure for the running curvature and Ricci scalar in simple models, illustrating how quantum effects reshape the underlying geometry. This geometric formulation unifies a broad class of scalar EFTs, providing insight into the interplay of curvature, scattering amplitudes, and renormalization.
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