Life at the Landau Pole

Abstract

If a quantum field theory has a Landau pole, the theory is usually called ‘sick’ and dismissed as a candidate for an interacting UV-complete theory. In a recent study on the interacting 4d O(N) model at large N, it was shown that at the Landau pole, observables remain well-defined and finite. In this work, I investigate both relevant and irrelevant deformations of the said model at the Landau pole, finding that physical observables remain unaffected. Apparently, the Landau pole in this theory is benign. As a phenomenological application, I compare the O(N) model to QCD by identifying ΛMS¯ with the Landau pole in the O(N) model.