Multiloop Feynman integrals
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| Vladimir Alexandrovich Smirnov (2009), Scholarpedia, 4(6):8507. | revision #63595 [link to/cite this article] | |||||||||||||||||||
Multiloop Feynman integrals appear when quantum-field amplitudes are constructed within perturbation theory. They are integrals over so-called loop momenta. Feynman has invented their graph-theoretical interpretation. (The term `Feynman integral' is sometimes used also for path integrals.) Feynman integrals are usually complicated objects even in a one-loop approximation, so that the number of loops equal to two is already considered big.
Contents |
Introduction
In perturbation theory, any quantum field model is characterized
by a Lagrangian, which is represented as a sum of a free-field
part and an interaction part,
.
Amplitudes of the model, e.g.
-matrix elements and
matrix elements of composite operators,
are represented as power series in coupling
constants. Starting from the
-matrix represented in terms of
the time-ordered exponent of the interaction Lagrangian which is
expanded with the application of the Wick theorem, or from Green
functions written in terms of a functional integral treated
perturbatively, one obtains that, in a fixed perturbation order,
the amplitudes are written as finite sums of Feynman integrals
which are constructed according to Feynman rules: lines correspond
to
and vertices are determined
by
- see (Bogoliubov N, 1983); (Itzykson C, 1980); (Peskin M, 1980); (Zavialov O, 1980).
The basic building block of the Feynman integrals is the propagator that enters the relation
Here
is the Feynman propagator of the field of type
,
denotes the time-ordered product and
the colons denote a normal product of the free fields.
The Fourier transforms of the propagators have the form
- (1)
where
,
is the corresponding mass,
is a polynomial
and
or
(for the gluon propagator
in the general covariant gauge).
The scalar product in Minkowski space is
, with
.
For the propagator of the scalar
field, one has
.
The causal
are usually omitted for brevity.
Polynomials associated with vertices of graphs
can be taken into account by means of the polynomials
.
For a usual Feynman graph, the denominators are quadratic. Linear
denominators usually appear in asymptotic expansions of Feynman
integrals within the strategy of expansion by regions (Beneke M, 1998);
(Smirnov V, 2002).
Such expansions provide a useful link of an initial theory
described by some Lagrangian with various effective theories
where, indeed, the denominators of propagators can be linear with
respect to the external and loop momenta. For example, one
encounters the following denominators:
, with an
external momentum
on the light cone,
, for the Sudakov
limit and with
for the quark propagator of Heavy Quark
Effective Theory (HQET). Some non-relativistic propagators appear
within threshold expansion and in the effective theory called
Non-Relativistic QCD (NRQCD), for example, the denominator
.
Eventually, one obtains, for any fixed perturbation order, a sum of Feynman
amplitudes labelled by Feynman graphs constructed from the given type of
vertices and lines. In the commonly accepted physical slang, the graph, the
corresponding Feynman amplitude and the corresponding Feynman integral over
loop momenta are all often called the `diagram'.
When dealing with graphs and Feynman
integrals one usually does not bother about the mathematical
definition of the graph and thinks about something that is built of lines
and vertices.
Still a graph is an ordered family
,
where
is the set of vertices,
is the
set of lines, and
are two mappings
that correspond the initial and the final vertex of a line.
(Mathematicians use the word `edge', rather than `line'.)
A Feynman graph differs from a graph by distinguishing a subset of vertices which are called external. The external momenta or coordinates on which a Feynman integral depends are associated with the external vertices.
Thus quantities that can be computed perturbatively are written,
in any given order of perturbation theory, through a sum over
Feynman graphs. For a given graph
, the corresponding
Feynman amplitude
- (2)
can be written in terms of an integral over loop momenta
- (3)
where
, and a factor
with a power of
is omitted for brevity. The Feynman
integral
depends on
linearly
independent external momenta
; the
corresponding integrand is a function of
internal momenta
, which are certain linear combinations of the external
momenta and
chosen loop momenta
, where
and
are numbers of lines, vertices and (independent) loops,
respectively, of the given graph.
One can choose the loop momenta by fixing a
tree
of the given graph,
i.e. a maximal connected subgraph without loops,
and correspond a loop momentum to each line
not belonging to this tree.
(This fixed tree is often called a spanning tree.)
Then one has the following explicit
formula for the momenta of the lines:
- (4)
where
if
belongs to the
-th loop and
otherwise,
if
lies in the tree
on the path
with the momentum
and
otherwise. The signs in both sums are defined
by orientations.
Divergences
As has been known from early days of quantum field theory, Feynman integrals over loop momenta usually have divergences. This word means that, taken naively, these integrals are ill-defined because the integrals over the loop momenta generally diverge. The ultraviolet (UV) divergences manifest themselves through a divergence of the Feynman integrals at large loop momenta. Consider, for example, the scalar Feynman integral
- (5)
corresponding to the one-loop graph
of Fig.1
where the scalar propagator with the mass
is
- (6)
Introducing four-dimensional
(generalized) spherical coordinates
in (5), where
is on the unit (generalized) sphere and is
expressed by means of three angles,
and counting powers of propagators, one obtains, in the limit
of large
, the following divergent behaviour:
.
For a general diagram with
loops, a similar power counting at
large values of the loop momenta gives
from the
Jacobian that arises when one introduces generalized spherical
coordinates in the
-dimensional space of
loop
four-momenta, plus a contribution from the powers of the
propagators and the degrees of its polynomials, and leads to an
integral
, where
- (7)
is the (UV) degree of divergence of the graph and
are
the degrees of the polynomials
in (1).
This estimate shows that the Feynman integral is overall UV convergent
(no divergences arise from the region where all the loop momenta are large)
if the degree of divergence is negative.
One says that the Feynman integral has a logarithmic, linear,
quadratic, etc. overall divergence when
,
respectively. To ensure a complete absence of UV divergences it
is necessary to check convergence in various regions where some of
the loop momenta become large, i.e. to satisfy the relation
for all the subgraphs
of the graph. One
calls a subgraph UV divergent if
. In fact, it
is sufficient to check these inequalities only for one-particle-irreducible (1PI) subgraphs (which cannot be made
disconnected by cutting a line). It turns out that these rough
estimates are indeed true.
If one turns from momentum space integrals
to some other representation of
Feynman diagrams, the UV divergences will manifest themselves in
other ways. For example, in coordinate space, the Feynman amplitude
(for example, (the inverse Fourier transform of (6)
in the scalar case) is
expressed in terms of a product of the Fourier transforms of propagators
integrated over four-coordinates
corresponding to the
internal vertices. Here
and
are the beginning and the
end, respectively, of a line
.
The propagators in coordinate space,
- (8)
are singular at small values of coordinates
.
For example the singular behaviour of the scalar propagator is
- (9)
where
is a Bessel function. The
leading singularity at
is given by the value of the
coordinate space massless propagator.
Thus, the inverse Fourier transform of the convolution integral
(5) equals the square of the coordinate-space scalar propagator
which has the singularity
.
Power-counting shows that this singularity
is not locally integrable in four dimensions,
and this is the coordinate space manifestation
of the UV divergence. In the language of the theory of
distributions, this means that, although individual propagators in
coordinate space are well-defined distributions their products are
usually ill-defined.
The divergences caused by singularities at small loop momenta are
called infrared (IR) divergences.
First one distinguishes
IR divergences
that arise at generic values of the external momenta.
A typical example of such a divergence is given by the graph where
one of the massless lines contains
the second power of the corresponding propagator and
one obtains a factor
in the integrand,
where
is chosen as the momentum of this line.
Then, keeping in mind the introduction of generalized
spherical coordinates
and performing power-counting at small
(i.e. when all the components
of the four-vector
are small), one again encounters a divergent behaviour
but now at small values of
.
There is a similarity between the properties of IR divergences
of this kind and those of UV
divergences. One can define, for such off-shell IR divergences, an IR degree
of divergence, in a similar way to the UV case.
A reasonable choice is provided by the value (Speer E, 1977)
- (10)
where
is the completion
of the subgraph
in a given graph
and
denotes the reduced graph which is obtained from
by reducing every connectivity component of
to a
point. The absence of off-shell IR divergences is guaranteed if
the IR degrees of divergence are negative for all massless
subgraphs
whose completions
include all the external vertices in the same
connectivity component.
The off-shell IR divergences are the worst but they are in fact
absent in physically meaningful theories. However, they play an
important role in asymptotic expansions of Feynman integrals in momenta and
masses (Smirnov V, 2002).
The other kinds of IR divergences arise when the external
momenta considered are on a surface
where the Feynman diagram is singular: either on a mass shell or at a
threshold.
Consider, for example, the massless graph of Fig.2.
Let us take
and all the masses equal to zero.
The corresponding Feynman integral is
- (11)
At small values of
, the integrand behaves like
,
and, with the help of power counting, one sees that there is
an on-shell IR divergence due to the region where
(componentwise).
Such IR divergences are local in momentum space,
i.e. connected with special points of the loop integration momenta.
Collinear divergences arise at lines parallel to certain
light-like four-vectors. The same triangle diagram
provides a typical example of a collinear divergence.
These are divergences at non-zero values of
that are collinear with
or
and where
.
This follows from the fact that the
product
, where
and
,
generates collinear divergences. To see this let us take
residues in the upper complex half plane when integrating this
product over
.
For example, taking the residue
at
leads to an integral containing
, where
is the angle
between the spatial components
and
.
Thus, for small
,
one has a divergent integration over angles because of the factor
.
The second residue generates a similar divergent behaviour –
this can be seen by making the change
.
Another way to reveal the collinear divergences is to introduce
the light-cone coordinates
. If one chooses
with the
only non-zero component
, one will see a logarithmic
divergence coming from the region
just by power
counting.
These are the main types of divergences of usual Feynman integrals. Various special divergences arise in more general Feynman integrals that can contain linear propagators and appear on the right-hand side of asymptotic expansions in momenta and masses and in associated effective theories. For example, in the Sudakov limit, one encounters divergences that can be classified as UV collinear divergences. Another situation with various non-standard divergences is provided by effective theories, for example, Heavy Quark Effective Theory, NRQCD and potential NRQCD, where special power counting is needed to characterize the divergences.
Regularization
Feynman integrals over loop momenta are usually divergent, because
they can have ultraviolet (UV), infrared (IR), collinear
divergences as well as some other kinds of divergences. The
standard way of dealing with divergent Feynman integrals is to
introduce a regularization. This means that, instead of the
original ill-defined Feynman integral, one considers a quantity
which depends on a regularization parameter,
, and
formally tends to the initial, meaningless expression when this
parameter takes some limiting value,
. This
new, regularized, quantity turns out to be well-defined, and the
divergence manifests itself as a singularity with respect to the
regularization parameter. Experience tells us that this
singularity can be of a power or logarithmic type, i.e.
.
An obvious way of regularizing UV-divergent Feynman integrals is to introduce a cut-off at large values of the loop momenta. Another well-known regularization procedure is the Pauli–Villars regularization (Pauli W, 1949), which is described by the replacement
and its generalizations. For finite values of the regularization parameter
, this procedure clearly improves the UV asymptotics of the integrand.
Here the limiting value of the regularization parameter is
.
If the integer powers
in the propagators are replaced by
general complex numbers
one obtains an analytically
regularized (Speer E, 1968) Feynman integral where the divergences of the diagram
are encoded in the poles of this regularized quantity with respect
to the analytic regularization parameters
. Consider,
for example, the analytically regularized Feynman integral
- (12)
corresponding to the one-loop graph
of Fig.1
Power counting at large values of the loop momentum reveals the
divergent behaviour
which results in a pole
at the limiting values of the
regularization parameters
.
Dimensional regularization and parametric representations of Feynman integrals
A very important type of regularization successfully applied in practice is dimensional regularization, where the regularization parameter is the space-time dimension considered as a general complex number - see (Bollini C, 1972); 't Hooft G, 1977); Breitenlohner P, 1977). In particular, it is compatible with gauge invariance. One way to introduce dimensional regularization is of algebraic character. It is based on certain axioms for integration in a space with non-integer dimension. After evaluating a Feynman integral according to the algebraic rules, one arrives at some concrete function of these parameters but, before integration, one is dealing with an abstract algebraic object.
An analytic way to introduce dimensional regularization
is based on a representation of Feynman integrals
as integrals over alpha (Schwinger) parameters.
In the case of
integer dimensions (e.g., for the physical
value
) and in the case of scalar propagators
the alpha representation has the form:
- (13)
where
and
are the well-known functions
In (14), the sum runs over
trees of the given graph, and, in (15),
over 2-trees, i.e. subgraphs that do not involve loops
and consist of two connectivity components;
is
the sum of the external momenta that flow
into one of the connectivity components of the 2-tree
. (It does not
matter which component is taken because of the conservation law for the
external momenta.) The products of the alpha parameters
involved are taken
over the lines that do not belong to the given tree
.
The functions
and
are homogeneous functions
of the alpha parameters with the homogeneity degrees
and
, respectively.
The dimensionally regularized Feynman integral corresponding to a
given graph
can be defined by means of (13),
where the quantity
is considered as a complex number. This is
a function of kinematical invariants
constructed
from the external momenta and contained in the function
.
The external momenta
as well as the metric tensor
are treated
as elements of an algebra of covariants, where one has
in particular,
.
This algebra also includes the
-matrices with
anticommutation relations
so that
.
The definition of the anti-symmetric tensor
in this algebra is more subtle.
Thus the dimensionally regularized Feynman integrals
are defined as linear combinations of tensor monomials in the external
momenta and other algebraic objects
with coefficients that are functions of the scalar products
and are given by
-parametric integrals.
Besides alpha parameters, the closely related Feynman parameters are often used. For a product of two propagators raised to general powers, one writes down the following relation:
- (16)
which is usually applied to a pair of appropriately chosen propagators.
If an obvious generalization of (16) is applied to an
arbitrary number of propagators and performs the integration over
all loop momenta one will arrive at a parametric representation
which can also be obtained from (13) by making the
change of variables
, with
,
performing the integration over
from
to
explicitly,
one obtains
- (17)
A folklore Cheng–Wu theorem says that the same formula (17) holds with the delta function
- (18)
where
is an arbitrary subset of the lines
, when
the integration over the rest of the
-variables, i.e. for
, is extended to the integration from zero to
infinity.
The parametric representations (13) and (17) are used for various purposes, in particular, to prove theorems on renormalization Hepp K, 1966); (Bergère M, 1974); [#BM|Breitenlohner P, 1977)]]; (Zavialov O, 1980), on asymptotic expansions of Feynman integrals in momenta and masses (Smirnov V, 2002), to evaluate Feynman integrals analytically and numerically (Smirnov V, 2004).
Although a regularization makes it possible to deal with
divergent Feynman integrals, it
does not actually remove divergences, because this operation is
of an auxiliary character so that sooner or later
it will be necessary to switch off the regularization.
To provide UV finiteness of physical observables evaluated
through Feynman diagrams, another operation, called
renormalization, is used (Bogoliubov N, 1983); (Itzykson C, 1980); (Peskin M, 1980); (Zavialov O, 1980).
This operation is described, at the Lagrangian level, as
a redefinition of the bare parameters of a given Lagrangian
by inserting counterterms.
The renormalization at the diagrammatic level is called
-operation.
It removes the UV divergence from individual
Feynman integrals.
The IR and collinear divergences are also removed but in another way. After the contribution of radiative corrections represented in terms of Feynman integrals is summed up with the contribution of real radiation, these divergences are cancelled with similar divergences present in this second part of perturbative corrections, so that physical results for amplitudes or cross-sections turn out to be finite.
References
- Beneke, M and Smirnov, V A (1998). Nucl. Phys. B522: 321.
- Bergère, M C and Zuber, J B (1974). Commun. Math. Phys. 35: 113.
- Bogoliubov, N N and Shirkov, D V (1983). Introduction to theory of quantized fields Wiley, New York.
- Bollini, C G and Giambiagi, J J (1972). Nuovo Cim. B12: 20.
- Breitenlohner, P and Maison, D (1977). Commun. Math. Phys. 52: 11, 39, 55.
- Hepp, K (1966). Commun. Math. Phys. 2: 301.
- 't Hooft, G and Veltman, M (1972). Nucl. Phys. B44: 189.
- Itzykson, C and Zuber, J B (1980). Quantum Field Theory Mcgraw-hill, New York.
- Pauli, W and Villars, F (1949). Rev. Mod. Phys. 21: 434.
- Peskin, M E and Schroeder, D V (1995). An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory Perseus, Reading.
- Smirnov, V A (2002). Applied asymptotic expansions in momenta and masses (Springer Tracts Mod. Phys. 177) Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
- Smirnov, V A (2004). Evaluating Feynman Integrals (Springer Tracts Mod. Phys. 211) Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
- Speer, E R (1968). J. Math. Phys. 9: 1404.
- Speer, E R (1977). Ann. Inst. H. Poincarè. 23: 1.
- Zavialov, O I (1990). Renormalized quantum field theory Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dodrecht.
Internal references
- Jean Zinn-Justin and Riccardo Guida (2008) Gauge invariance. Scholarpedia, 3(12):8287.
- Jean Zinn-Justin (2009) Path integral. Scholarpedia, 4(2):8674.
See also
Multiloop Feynman integrals (Evaluation), Renormalization, Renormalization group
| Vladimir Alexandrovich Smirnov (2009) Multiloop Feynman integrals. Scholarpedia, 4(6):8507, (go to the first approved version) Created: 28 October 2008, reviewed: 4 June 2009, accepted: 9 June 2009 |


