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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Physics Department Faculty Publication Series

2009

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

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When Effective Field Theories Fail, John Donoghue Jan 2009

When Effective Field Theories Fail, John Donoghue

Physics Department Faculty Publication Series

In this talk, I describe and defend four non-standard claims about four effective field theories, and try to extract some lessons about the limits of effective field theory. The four theses (and a capsule diagnosis given in parentheses) are: 1) Kaon loops are not a reliable part of chiral perturbation theory (dimensional regularization does not know about the chiral scale), 2) Regge physics is inappropriately missing from SCET (an infinite set of scales are needed) 3) There is likely a barrier in the use of EFT in general relativity in the extreme infrared (curvature effects build up) and 4) Gauge …