Stable non-linear evolution in regularised higher derivative effective field theories

Abstract

We study properties of a recently proposed regularisation scheme to formulate the initial value problem for general (relativistic) effective field theories (EFTs) with arbitrary higher order equations of motion. We consider a simple UV theory that describes a massive and a massless scalar degree of freedom. Integrating out the heavy field gives rise to an EFT for the massless scalar. By adding suitable regularising terms to the EFT truncated at the level of dimension-$4$ and dimension-$6$ operators, we show that the resulting regularised theories admit a well-posed initial value problem. The regularised theories are related by a field redefinition to the original truncated EFTs and they propagate massive ghost fields (whose masses can be chosen to be of the order of the UV mass scale), in addition to the light field. We numerically solve the equations of motion of the UV theory and those of the regularised EFTs in $1+1$-dimensional Minkowski space for various choices of initial data and UV mass parameter. When derivatives of the initial data are sufficiently small compared to the UV mass scale, the regularised EFTs exhibit stable evolution in the computational domain and provide very accurate approximations of the UV theory. On the other hand, when the initial gradients of the light field are comparable to the UV mass scale, the effective field theory description breaks down and the corresponding regularised EFTs exhibit ghost-like/tachyonic instabilities. Finally, we also formulate a conjecture on the global nonlinear stability of the vacuum in the regularised scalar EFTs in $3+1$ dimensions. These results suggest that the regularisation approach provides a consistent classical description of the UV theory in a regime where effective field theory is applicable.