arXiv subjects

Ming-Lei Xiao

Publications and source records attributed to Ming-Lei Xiao.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Complete UV Resonances of SMEFT Dim-9 Operators for Short-range Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay

We present a systematic classification of tree-level ultraviolet (UV) completions for dimension-nine SMEFT operators relevant to short-range neutrinoless double beta decay. Using the SMEFT J-basis framework, we categorize distinct UV completions, including both all-boson and boson-fermion-boson topologies. A primary objective is the identification of minimal UV realizations, defined as the smallest set of genuine heavy degrees of freedom required to generate each operator. Out of the 505 unique mediator combinations identified, 440 are found to be minimal, with 12 cases necessitating only two distinct heavy species. While our findings reproduce the scalar- and fermion-mediated results of Ref.[1], we significantly extend the classification by providing the first comprehensive compilation of 324 minimal UV completions featuring vector resonances -- a category previously unexplored in this context.

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arXiv2026

An introduction to gauge theories and group theory in particle physics

In this review, the fundamental concepts of group theory and representation theory are introduced. Special emphasis is placed on the unitary irreducible representations of the $SU(N)$ Lie group, the Poincare group, Little Group, discrete group, and their applications in particle physics. Based on the principle of local gauge symmetry, the construction of gauge-invariant Lagrangians and their quantization procedure are discussed. To address gauge redundancy, the modern on-shell amplitude approach is applied to gauge theories, demonstrating both conceptual and computational advantages. From the perspective of symmetry, the Standard Model is presented through the identification of its gauge symmetry, its anomaly-free matter content, and its global symmetries, including flavor symmetry, custodial symmetry, and baryon and lepton number conservation, etc.

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arXiv2025

On-Shell Renormalization of Dim-8 SMEFT from Complete Amplitude Basis: I. Four-Fermion Operators

We compute the complete one-loop renormalization group equations (RGEs) for all the four-fermion operators at dimension-8 Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). We adopt the on-shell framework, where the RGEs are obtained from the unitarity cuts of the bubble integrals. To construct a consistent set of RGEs without redundancy, we utilize the Young Tensor amplitude/operator basis as the building blocks of the tree-level amplitudes that constitute the unitarity cuts, which incorporates the full flavor structures of the effective operators. Due to the large number of effective operators for a dimension-8 type, it is crucial to reduce the integrated cuts to the same RGE amplitude basis, which is also made possible by the algorithm in the Young Tensor method. With the Mathematica package ABC4EFT that implements the method, we obtain the full result of the dimension-8 four-fermion RGEs with the output file attached as the supplementary material.

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arXiv2025

Gauged Soft Recursion: On-Shell Construction of Goldstone-Gauge Amplitudes

We present a new on-shell recursion relation for scattering amplitudes involving Nambu-Goldstone bosons with a gauged unbroken symmetry. A central challenge is that gauge interactions break Adler's zero condition for charged scalars, invalidating the standard soft recursion. To overcome this, we introduce a ``gauged soft recursion'' that leverages the soft theorems of the gauge bosons themselves, combined with a novel decomposition of amplitudes into gauge-invariant components where Adler's zero is partially restored. The formalism, which also incorporates internal gauge bosons via angular momentum constraints, enables the systematic construction of tree-level amplitudes with arbitrary numbers of Goldstone bosons and gauge bosons in both Abelian and non-Abelian theories, as we demonstrate with explicit examples.

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arXiv2023

Complete UV Resonances of the Dimension-8 SMEFT Operators

The effective field theory approach parameterizes the low energy behaviors of all possible ultraviolet (UV) theories in a systematic way. One of the most important tasks is thus to find the connection between the effective operators and their UV origins. The redundancy relations among operators make the connection very subtle, hence we proposed the j-basis prescription to illuminate the correspondence between operators and their UV resonances in the bottom-up way. In this work, we work out the dimension-8 j-basis operators in the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT), and find all the 146 (82) tree-level UV resonances along with their couplings up to mass dimension 5 (4). Furthermore, we point out a few subtleties on operator generation via field redefinition and on the UV Lagrangian for generic spin resonances. We also provide a data base storing our results and a \texttt{Mathematica} notebook for extracting those results for the reader's conveinence.

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arXiv2023

Entanglement Suppression, Enhanced Symmetry and a Standard-Model-like Higgs Boson

We study information-theoretic properties of scalar models containing two Higgs doublets $Φ_a$, where $a=1,2$ is the flavor quantum number. Considering the 2-to-2 scattering $Φ_a Φ_b \to Φ_c Φ_d$ as a two-qubit system in the flavor subspace and the S-matrix as a quantum logic gate, we analyze the entanglement power of the S-matrix at the tree-level, in the limit the gauge coupling is turned off. Demanding the suppression of flavor entanglement during the scattering, the perturbative S-matrix in the broken phase can only be in the equivalent class of the Identity gate and the scalar potential exhibits a maximally enhanced $SO(8)$ symmetry acting on the 8 real components of the two doublets. The $SO(8)$ symmetry leads to the alignment limit naturally, giving rise to a Standard-Model-like Higgs boson as a consequence of entanglement suppression.

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arXiv2023

On-shell Operator Construction in the Effective Field Theory of Gravity

We construct the on-shell amplitude basis and the corresponding effective operators for generic modified gravity theory, such as pure gravity with higher derivatives, scalar-tensor gravity, Einstein-Yang-Mills, etc. Taking the Weyl tensor as the building block, we utilize the Young tensor technique to obtain independent operators, without equation of motion and total derivative redundancies. We update our algorithm and vastly increase the speed for finding the monomial basis (m-basis) of effective operators expressed in terms of Weyl tensors with Lorentz indices, the familiar form for the General Relativity community. Finally, we obtain the complete and independent amplitude and operator basis for GRSMEFT and GRLEFT up to mass dimension 10.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Complete NLO Operators in the Higgs Effective Field Theory

We enumerate the complete and independent sets of operators at the next-to-leading order (NLO) in the Higgs effective field theory (HEFT), based on the Young tensor technique on the Lorentz, gauge and flavor structures. The operator-amplitude correspondence tells a type of operators forms the on-shell amplitude basis, and for operators involving in Nambu-Goldstone bosons, the amplitude basis is further reduced to the subspace satisfying the Adler's zero condition in the soft momentum limit. Different from dynamical field, the spurion should not enter into the Lorentz sector, instead it only plays a role of forming the $SU(2)$ invariant together with other dynamical fields. With these new treatments, for the first time we could obtain the 224 (7704) operators for one (three) generation fermions, 295 (11307) with right-handed neutrinos, and find there were 6 (9) terms of operators missing and many redundant operators can be removed in the effective theory without (with) right-handed neutrinos.

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arXiv2022

The Bottom-Up EFT: Complete UV Resonances of the SMEFT Operators

The standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) provides systematic parameterization of all possible new physics above the electroweak scale. According to the amplitude-operator correspondence, an effective operator can be decomposed into a linear combination of several j-basis operators, which correspond to local amplitudes carrying certain spin and gauge quantum numbers in a particular scattering channel. Based on the Poincare and gauge symmetries of scattering amplitude, we construct the j-basis using the Casimir method for both the Lorentz and gauge sectors. The quantum numbers of the j-basis operators fix the quantum numbers of any intermediate state in the corresponding amplitudes, such as a UV resonance. This can be re-interpreted as the j-basis/UV correspondence, thus obtaining the j-bases in all partitions of fields for an operator amounts to finding all of its UV origins at tree level, constituting the central part of the bottom-up EFT framework. Applying the j-basis analysis to SMEFT, we obtain a complete list of possible tree-level UV origins of the effective operators at the dimension 5, 6, 7, and all the bosonic operators at the dimension 8.

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arXiv2022

Complete NNLO Operator Bases in Higgs Effective Field Theory

For the first time, we list the complete and independent set of operators at the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in the Higgs effective field theory (HEFT), also named as the electroweak chiral Lagrangian with the light Higgs boson. The Young tensor technique utilized in this work guarantees the completeness and independence of the on-shell amplitude basis while the Adler zero condition imposes non-linear symmetry on the Nambu-Goldstone bosons that play the central role in the chiral Lagrangian. The spurion fields are incorporated into the gauge structure of operators following the Littlewood-Richardson rule to accommodate custodial symmetry breaking. We enumerate 11506 (1927574) NNLO operators for one (three) flavor of fermions for the electroweak chiral Lagrangian with the light Higgs. Below the electroweak symmetry breaking scale, the dimension-8 standard model effective field theory (SMEFT) operators could be matched to these HEFT operators at both the NLO and NNLO orders.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Constructing the general partial waves and renormalization in EFT

We construct the general partial wave amplitude basis for the $N\to M$ scattering, which consists of Poincaré Clebsch-Gordan coefficients, with Lorentz invariant forms given in terms of spinor-helicity variables. The inner product of the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients is defined, which converts on-shell phase space integration into an algebraic problem. We also develop the technique of partial wave expansions of arbitrary amplitudes, including those with infrared divergence. These are applied to the computation of anomalous dimension matrix for general effective operators, where unitarity cuts for the loop amplitudes, with an arbitrary number of external particles, are obtained via partial wave expansion.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Amplitude/Operator Basis in Chiral Perturbation Theory

We establish a systematic construction of the on-shell amplitude/operator basis for Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) in $D=4$ spacetime dimensions and with an arbitrary number of flavors $N_f$. For kinematic factors, we employ spinor-helicity variables to construct the soft blocks, which are local amplitudes satisfying the Adler's zero condition, as well as to take into account the reduction in the kinematic basis due to the Gram determinant, which arises at $O(p^{10})$ when the number of multiplicity $N$ in an amplitude becomes large: $N>D$. For flavor factors, we include group-theoretic relations at small $N_f$, $N_f\le N$, which decreases the flavor basis. The result is obtained by adapting the Young tensor method of constructing the operator basis for generic effective field theories to the case of non-linearly realized symmetries. Working in the massless quark limit, we present purely mesonic operators for both even- and odd-parity at $O(p^6)$ and $O(p^8)$ for $N=6$ and arbitrary $N_f$, and establish a direct correspondence between the amplitude basis and the operator basis. Furthermore, the redundancy due to the Gram determinant is studied at $O(p^{10})$ for $N=6, 8$ and 10.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Theoretical developments in the SMEFT at dimension-8 and beyond

In this contribution to the Snowmass 2021 process we review theoretical developments in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) with a focus on effects at the dimension-8 level and beyond. We review the theoretical advances that led to the complete construction of the operator bases for the dimension-8 and dimension-9 SMEFT Lagrangians. We discuss the possibility of obtaining all-orders results in the $1/Λ$ expansion for certain SMEFT observables as well as the current status of renormalization group running and implications for positivity, and briefly present the on-shell approach to constructing SMEFT amplitudes. Finally we present several new phenomenological effects that first arise at dimension-8 and discuss the impact of these terms on experimental analyses.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Operators For Generic Effective Field Theory at any Dimension: On-shell Amplitude Basis Construction

We describe a general procedure to construct the independent and complete operator bases for generic Lorentz invariant effective field theories, given any kind of gauge symmetry and field content, up to any mass dimension. By considering the operator as contact on-shell amplitude, the so-called amplitude operator correspondence, we provide a unified construction of the Lorentz and gauge and flavor structures by Young Tableau tensor. Several bases are constructed to emphasize different aspects: independence (y-basis and m-basis), repeated fields with flavors (p-basis), and conserved quantum numbers (j-basis). We also provide new algorithms for finding the m-basis by defining inner products for group factors and the p-basis by constructing the matrix representations of the Young symmetrizers from group generators. The on-shell amplitude basis gives us a systematic way to convert any operator into such basis, so that the conversions between any other operator bases can be easily done by linear algebra. All of these are implemented in a Mathematica package: ABC4EFT (Amplitude Basis Construction for Effective Field Theories).

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arXiv2021

Operator Bases in Effective Field Theories with Sterile Neutrinos: $d \leq 9$

We obtain the complete and independent bases of effective operators at mass dimension 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 in both standard model effective field theory with light sterile right-handed neutrinos ($ν$SMEFT) and low energy effective field theory with light sterile neutrinos ($ν$LEFT). These theories provide systematical parametrizations on all possible Lorentz-invariant physical effects involving in the Majorana/Dirac neutrinos, with/without the lepton number violations. In the $ν$SMEFT, we find that there are 2 (18), 29 (1614), 80 (4206), 323 (20400), 1358 (243944) independent operators with sterile neutrinos included at the dimension 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 for one (three) generation of fermions, while 24, 5223, 3966, 25425, 789426 independent operators in the $ν$LEFT.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Low Energy Effective Field Theory Operator Basis at $d \le 9$

We obtain the complete operator bases at mass dimensions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 for the low energy effective field theory (LEFT), which parametrize various physics effects between the QCD scale and the electroweak scale. The independence of the operator basis regarding the equation of motion, integration by parts and flavor relations, is guaranteed by our algorithm, whose validity for the LEFT with massive fermions involved is proved by a generalization of the amplitude-operator correspondence. At dimension 8 and 9, we list the 35058 (756) and 704584 (3686) operators for three (one) generations of fermions categorized by their baryon and lepton number violations $(ΔB, ΔL)$, as these operators are of most phenomenological relevance.

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arXiv2021

A Tale of Two-U(1) Axion Models

The $U(1)$ global symmetry to solve the strong $CP$ problem could be the remnant of multi-$U(1)$ symmetries from QCD and hidden strong dynamics. Both Peccei-Quinn $U(1)$ and dynamical $U(1)$ are described uniformly, based on which we classify various mixed two-$U(1)$ models to solve both strong $CP$ and quality problems. We propose a moose diagram method with different fermion assignments to directly read relations between $CP$ phases, which illustrate how strong $CP$ problem is solved in terms of cancellation between $CP$ phases. In two axion models, we find the lightest axion is still same as QCD axion at infrared region, while one axion model with $Z_2$ symmetry enhances the axion mass spectrum. Our discussions can be extended to multi-axion cases.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Complete Set of Dimension-8 Operators in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory

We present a complete list of the dimension 8 operator basis in the standard model effective field theory using group theoretic techniques in a systematic and automated way. We adopt a new form of operators in terms of the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group, and identify the Lorentz structures as states in a $SU(N)$ group. In this way, redundancy from equations of motion is absent and that from integration-by-part is treated using the fact that the independent Lorentz basis forms an invariant subspace of the $SU(N)$ group. We also decompose operators into the ones with definite permutation symmetries among flavor indices to deal with subtlety from repeated fields. For the first time, we provide the explicit form of independent flavor-specified operators in a systematic way. Our algorithm can be easily applied to higher dimensional standard model effective field theory and other effective field theories, making these studies more approachable.

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