Nonlocal quantum field theory without acausality and nonunitarity at quantum level: Is SUSY the key?

Abstract

The realization of a nonlocal quantum field theory without losing unitarity, gauge invariance and causality is investigated. It is commonly retained that such a formulation is possible at tree level, but at quantum level acausality is expected to reappear at one loop. We suggest that the problem of acausality is, in a broad sense, similar to the one about anomalies in quantum field theory. By virtue of this analogy, we suggest that acausal diagrams resulting from the fermionic sector and the bosonic one might cancel each other, with a suitable content of fields and suitable symmetries. As a simple example, we show how supersymmetry can alleviate this problem in a simple and elegant way, i.e. by leading to exact cancellations of harmful diagrams, to all orders of perturbation theory. An infinite number of divergent diagrams cancel each other by virtue of the nonrenormalization theorem of supersymmetry. However, supersymmetry is not enough to protect a theory from all acausal divergences. For instance, acausal contributions to supersymmetric corrections to D-terms are not protected by supersymmetry. On the other hand, we show in detail how supersymmetry also helps in dealing with D-terms: divergences are not canceled but they become softer than in the nonsupersymmetric case. The supergraphs' formalism turns out to be a powerful tool to reduce the complexity of perturbative calculations.