High Energy Theory Seminar

Spontaneously broken conformal invariance appears in many contexts such as a class of Higgs portal models, N>=2 SYM on its Coulomb branch, inflation and target space string theory. In observables this broken symmetry is shown to lead to soft theorems for its single associated Goldstone boson, the dilaton. In the presence of massive on-shell matter these take the form of certain 'subleading' soft theorems. A tight relation to the Callan-Symanzik equation is emphasized. A scale symmetry preserving variant of dimensional regularisation is investigated at one loop in a scalar model. Cancelling the \epsilon-poles does not introduce beta or gamma functions. Instead, in this approach the anomalous dimensions of fields and coupling constants are associated to sub-leading UV divergences.