Physics Letters B 792 (2019) 238–243
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Scalar kinetic mixing and the renormalization group
Johan Bijnens, Joel Oredsson, Johan Rathsman
Department of Astronomy and Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sölvegatan 14A, SE 223-62 Lund, Sweden
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
29 December 2018
Received
in revised form 21 March 2019
Accepted
26 March 2019
Available
online 1 April 2019
Editor:
A. Ringwald
Keywords:
Kinetic
mixing
Higgs
physics
Renormalization
scheme
Renormalization
group
RGE
Quantum field theories containing scalar fields with equal quantum numbers allow for a mixed kinetic
term in the Lagrangian. It has been argued that this mixing must be taken into consideration when
performing renormalization group (RG) analyses of such a theory. However, from the fact that scalar
kinetic mixing does not correspond to a physical observable, we show that no extra parameters need to
be introduced. Using a toy model, we explicitly derive the 1-loop RG equations (RGEs) in three different
renormalization schemes to demonstrate how this issue can be dealt with. In schemes without kinetic
mixing, either the fields mix during renormalization to produce non-diagonal anomalous dimensions or
the RGEs explicitly depend on the scalar masses. Finally, we show how the different schemes are related
to each other by scale dependent field redefinitions.
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
One common feature of beyond the standard models is the
inclusion of extra scalar fields. A very well studied example is
the so called two Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) which was intro-
duced
in 1974 by T.D. Lee [1]. As its name implies, it has two
Higgs doublets instead of one as in the standard model. Most phe-
nomenological
studies of the 2HDM assumes that the two Higgs
doublets are charged differently under a discrete Z
2
symmetry and
that this symmetry is at most softly broken, i.e. by mass-terms, in
the scalar potential. By assigning appropriate charges to the right-
handed
fermion fields, this ensures that there are no tree-level Fla-
vor
Changing Neutral Currents (FCNC). However, in general there is
no justification to make this assumption, since the 2HDM in itself
is also not a complete theory. For example having the same fine-
tuning
or hierarchy problem as the standard model. In fact, in a
supersymmetric version of the theory, the Z
2
symmetry is broken
when going beyond tree-level [2] and even though this breaking is
only soft it gives rise to so called non-holomorphic corrections.
In
this paper we want to clarify in a pedagogical way what
happens when the Z
2
symmetry is broken. One immediate con-
sequence
is that the two Higgs doublets will mix, giving rise to
both kinetic and mass mixing. At tree level, as is well known,
1
E-mail addresses: bijnens@thep.lu.se (J. Bijnens), joel.oredsson@thep.lu.se
(J. Oredsson),
johan.rathsman@thep.lu.se (J. Rathsman).
1
See for example sec. 12.5 in ref. [3].
the kinetic term as well as the mass matrix can be diagonalized.
The question we investigate in this paper is whether this can be
done consistently also at loop-level, i.e. after renormalization, and
whether the kinetic term can be kept diagonal also under renor-
malization
group evolution, even though the fields mix. In refs. [4,
5]it
was claimed that whereas one can always make the kinetic
term diagonal at a given renormalization scale, the mixing will
reappear if the renormalization scale is changed, thus meaning
that one gets an additional parameter. This claim has also led to
some confusion in the literature [6]. As we will show in this pa-
per,
this claim is not correct and one does not need an additional
parameter in order to renormalize the theory. Instead, one can
choose to work with different renormalization schemes where this
parameter is either present or not, all giving the same results. The
underlying reason behind this result is that the two-point func-
tions
are in fact not observables and as such do not need to be
finite; the observables are masses and scattering amplitudes. We
also show that in those schemes where there is no kinetic mixing,
one instead has mixing of the fields under renormalization corre-
sponding
to a change of basis which has to be taken into account.
A
similar problem occurs in the renormalization of the CKM
matrix. For a recent discussion of how that is resolved in different
renormalization schemes for the case of an extended scalar sector,
see ref. [7].
We
present three different renormalization schemes with or
without kinetic mixing and show how they are related at one-
loop
level under renormalization through orthogonal and non-
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2019.03.051
0370-2693/
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.