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Journal of High Energy Physics

Effective Hamiltonians and Wilson-Polchinski renormalisation

R K Li, Benoît Vicedo

Published Jul 2, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A bstract We develop a novel approach to the Wilsonian renormalisation of Hamiltonians for 2-dimensional quantum field theories on the cylinder described in the UV by marginally relevant deformations of conformal field theories. To introduce a Wilsonian short-distance cutoff we make essential use of free field realisations of the full vertex operator algebra in the UV. Our method is intrinsically non-perturbative; we derive a Hamiltonian analogue of Polchinski’s equation describing the flows of all couplings. As a primary example of our general method, we apply it to the marginal anisotropic deformation of the $$ {\mathfrak{su}}_2 $$ su 2 Wess-Zumino-Witten model at level 1, which is equivalent to the sine-Gordon model on the cylinder. In particular, we reproduce the standard renormalisation group flow of the sine-Gordon model near the Kosterlitz-Thouless point to second order in the couplings, a result usually derived using Lagrangian/path-integral methods.

DOI
10.1007/jhep07(2026)024

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A bstract We develop a novel approach to the Wilsonian renormalisation of Hamiltonians for 2-dimensional quantum field theories on the cylinder described in the UV by marginally relevant deformations of conformal field theories. To introduce a Wilsonian short-distance cutoff we make essential use of free field realisations of the full vertex operator algebra in the UV. Our method is intrinsically non-perturbative; we derive a Hamiltonian analogue of Polchinski’s equation describing the flows of all couplings. As a primary example of our general method, we apply it to the marginal anisotropic deformation of the su2{\mathfrak{su}}_2su2​ su 2 Wess-Zumino-Witten model at level 1, which is equivalent to the sine-Gordon model on the cylinder. In particular, we reproduce the standard renormalisation group flow of the sine-Gordon model near the Kosterlitz-Thouless point to second order in the couplings, a result usually derived using Lagrangian/path-integral methods.
The renormalization group (RG) flow for the two-dimensional sine-Gordon model is determined by means of Polchinski's RG equation at next-to-leading order in the derivative expansion. In this work we have two different goals, (i) to consider the renormalization scheme-dependence of Polchinski's method by matching Polchinski's equation with the Wegner-Houghton equation and with the real space RG equations for the two-dimensional dilute Coulomb-gas, (ii) to go beyond the local potential approximation in the gradient expansion in order to clarify the supposed role of the field-dependent wave-function renormalization. The well-known Coleman fixed point of the sine-Gordon model is recovered after linearization, whereas the flow exhibits strong dependence on the choice of the renormalization scheme when non-linear terms are kept. The RG flow is compared to those obtained in the Wegner-Houghton approach and in the dilute gas approximation for the two-dimensional Coulomb-gas.
We study 1+1 dimensional ϕ 4 theory using the recently proposed method of conformal truncation. Starting in the UV CFT of free field theory, we construct a complete basis of states with definite conformal Casimir, C \mathcal{C} C . We use these states to express the Hamiltonian of the full interacting theory in lightcone quantization. After truncating to states with C≤Cmax⁡ \mathcal{C}\le {\mathcal{C}}_{\max } C≤Cmax​ , we numerically diagonalize the Hamiltonian at strong coupling and study the resulting IR dynamics. We compute non-perturbative spectral densities of several local operators, which are equivalent to real-time, infinite-volume correlation functions. These spectral densities, which include the Zamolodchikov C-function along the full RG flow, are calculable at any value of the coupling. Near criticality, our numerical results reproduce correlation functions in the 2D Ising model.
We develop the theory of Hamiltonian Truncation (HT) to systematically study RG flows that require the renormalization of coupling constants. This is a necessary step towards making HT a fully general method for QFT calculations. We apply this theory to a number of QFTs defined as relevant deformations of d=1+1 CFTs. We investigated three examples of increasing complexity: The deformed Ising, Tricritical-Ising, and non-unitary minimal model M(3,7). The first two examples provide a crosscheck of our methodologies against well established characteristics of these theories. The M(3,7) CFT deformed by its \mathbb{Z}_2 ℤ 2 -even operators shows an intricate phase diagram that we clarify. At a boundary of this phase diagram we show that this theory flows, in the IR, to the M(3,5) CFT.
We study perturbative Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) for the scalar ϕ 4 theory at finite temperature to one loop order in the Schwinger-Keldysh closed-time-path (CTP) formalism. By explicitly integrating out the UV modes, we show how effective interactions coupling the two branches of the CTP contour arise. This provides a microscopic derivation of the type of effective CTP actions used in the literature. While the full effective theory has no critical points, we instead proceed to study critical properties of the RG flow in a reduced space of complex couplings that characterize certain time-ordered correlators and show the existence of two novel fixed points in d = 4 spacetime dimensions. We relate one to the Wilson-Fisher fixed point known to exist only in 4 − ε dimensions, and the other to the standard Gaussian fixed point.
A bstract We present efficient algorithms for obtaining the Hamiltonian in Lightcone Conformal Truncation (LCT) for a 2d scalar field with a generic potential. We apply this method to the sine-Gordon and sinh-Gordon models in 1 +1 d , and find precise agreement with integrability results when the scaling dimension ∆ of the deforming cosine/cosinh potential is in the range ∆ ≤ 1. The agreement provides additional evidence for a recent conjecture for how to compute the effective lightcone Hamiltonian in this class of models. In addition, to high precision, we provide the first direct confirmation for the conjectured self-duality of the sinh-Gordon model (∆ < 0), which relates ∆ ↔ 4/∆. As the dimension approaches the upper limit ∆ = 1 from below, we show analytically that the Hamiltonian matrix elements exactly reproduce those of a free Majorana fermion, demonstrating how bosonization is manifested in the LCT basis. We comment on the possible extension of the approach to ∆ > 1.
Abstract In this work we illustrate the resurgent structure of the λ-deformation; a two-dimensional integrable quantum field theory that has an RG flow with an SU(N)k Wess-Zumino-Witten conformal fixed point in the UV. To do so we use modern matched asymptotic techniques applied to the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz formulation to compute the free energy to 38 perturbative orders in an expansion of large applied chemical potential. We find numerical evidence for factorial asymptotic behaviour with both alternating and non-alternating character which we match to an analytic expression. A curiosity of the system is that the leading non-alternating factorial growth vanishing when k divides N. The ambiguities associated to Borel resummation of this series are suggestive of non-perturbative contributions. This is verified with an analytic study of the TBA system demonstrating a cancellation between perturbative and non-perturbative ambiguities.