Anomaly (physics) - Anomalies at Different Energy Scales

Anomalies At Different Energy Scales

Quantum anomalies were discovered via the process of renormalization, when some divergent integrals cannot be regularized in such a way that all the symmetries are preserved simultaneously. This is related to the physics at the UV (i.e. at high energies). However, due to Gerard 't Hooft's anomaly matching condition, any chiral anomaly can be described either by the UV degrees of freedom (those relevant at high energies) or by the IR degrees of freedom (those relevant at low energies). Thus one cannot cancel the anomaly by some UV completion of the theory — an anomalous symmetry is simply not a symmetry of the theory, even though classically it looks as if it is.

Read more about this topic:  Anomaly (physics)

Famous quotes containing the words energy and/or scales:

    Just as we need to encourage women to test life’s many options, we need to acknowledge real limits of energy and resources. It would be pointless and cruel to prescribe role combination for every woman at each moment of her life. Life has its seasons. There are moments when a woman ought to invest emotionally in many different roles, and other moments when she may need to conserve her psychological energies.
    Faye J. Crosby (20th century)

    As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.
    Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)