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Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 110405 (2004) [4 pages]

Renormalization Flow of QED

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Holger Gies and Joerg Jaeckel
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University, Philosophenweg 16, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Received 2 June 2004; published 9 September 2004

We investigate textbook QED in the framework of the exact renormalization group. In the strong-coupling region, we study the influence of fluctuation-induced photonic and fermionic self-interactions on the nonperturbative running of the gauge coupling. Our findings confirm the triviality hypothesis of complete charge screening if the ultraviolet cutoff is sent to infinity. Though the Landau pole does not belong to the physical coupling domain owing to spontaneous chiral-symmetry-breaking (χSB), the theory predicts a scale of maximal UV extension of the same order as the Landau pole scale. In addition, we verify that the χSB phase of the theory which is characterized by a light fermion and a Goldstone boson also has a trivial Yukawa coupling.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.110405
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.110405
PACS:
12.20.–m, 11.10.Hi, 11.15.Tk