Functional Dimensional Regularization

Abstract

We introduce and develop Functional Dimensional Regularization (FDR), a novel functional renormalization group (RG) framework that extends the principles of dimensional regularization beyond the perturbative $\varepsilon$-expansion. The key insight is to define the FDR beta functions, valid in any continuous dimension $d$ and characterized by threshold functions, as a sum over all critical dimensions of the corresponding scheme-independent beta functions computed in DR. We demonstrate that this formalism exhibits all the hallmarks of a fully-fledged functional RG. Within the local potential approximation, we perform a general fixed point analysis, recovering the $\varepsilon$-expansion for all multi-critical models and establishing a direct connection to functional scaling solutions, spike plots, and eigen-perturbation spectra. Extending the framework to the second order of the derivative expansion, we compute the critical exponents for the Ising universality class in $d=3$, providing estimates for the anomalous dimension $η$ and RG spectrum that converge rapidly and show favorable agreement with state-of-the-art results. We present a detailed comparison with non-perturbative and proper-time RG approaches, highlighting structural similarities and key differences. In particular, we introduce a ``distillation'' procedure that allows one to systematically derive the FDR flow from any other one-loop-exact RG scheme. Our results establish FDR as a self-contained and competitive RG framework that combines the technical simplicity of dimensional regularization with the versatility of the functional approach.