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# Quantum dots in high magnetic fields: Rotating-Wigner-molecule versus composite-fermion approach

## I Introduction

Two-dimensional (2D) $`N`$-electron systems (with a small finite $`N`$) in strong magnetic fields ($`B`$) have been the focus of extensive theoretical investigations in the last twenty years.lau1 ; lau2 ; gir ; jai3 ; mac ; jai1 ; jai4 ; mk ; sek ; mak1 ; rua ; yl2 ; mak2 ; cre2m ; yl5 ; ron1m ; sba  The principal motivations for these research activities are: (I) The early realization lau1 ; lau2  that certain special states of few electron systems are relevanthaw  through appropriate analogies to the physics of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE), observed in the infinite 2D electron gas; (II) The unavoidable necessity, due to computer limitations, to test proposed model wave functions for the FQHE through numerical calculations for finite-size systems; (III) The recent progress in nanofabrication techniques at semiconductor interfaces that has allowed experiments on 2D quantum dots (QD’s), with refined control of their size, shape, and number of electronsash ; tar ; kou  (down to a few electrons).

The physics of such systems (i.e., QD’s in high $`B`$), is most often described with the use of composite-fermionjai3 /Jastrow-Laughlinlau1  (CF/JL) analytic trial wave functions in the complex plane. However, it is well known that the thematic framework of the CF/JL approach is built on the so-called Jastrow correlations associated with a particular short-range interparticle repulsion.hk  In a recent paper,yl5  using as a thematic basis the picture of collectively rotating electron (or Wigner) molecules (REM’s), we have derived a different class of analytic and parameter-free trial wave functions. The promising property of these REM wave functions is that, unlike the CF/JL ones, they capture the all-important correlations arising from the long-range character of the Coulomb force.

In this paper, we present an in-depth assessment of the CF/JL and REM trial wave functions regarding their ability to approximate the exact wave functions in the case of QD’s (this case is often referred to as the “disk geometry” in the FQHE literature). First systematic exact diagonalization (EXD) results are reported here for the lowest rotational band of $`N=6`$ electrons in strong magnetic fields in the range of high angular momenta $`70L140`$ (covering the corresponding range of fractional filling factorsnote4  $`1/5\nu 1/9`$). A detailed comparison (addressing five properties, i.e., prediction of magic angular momenta, radial electron densities, occupation number distributions, overlaps and total energies, and exponents of current-voltage power law) shows that the REM wave functions yield a superior description to that obtained through the composite-fermion/Jastrow-Laughlin ones.

The plan of this paper is as follows: Section II presents an outline of the REM theory, while section III focuses on a brief review of the composite-fermion approach. Exact-diagonalization results and comparisons with the CF/JL and REM wave functions are presented in section IV. Finally, our results are summarized in section V.

## II Outline of REM theory

In the last eight years, and in particular since 1999 \[when it was demonstratedyl1  that Wigner crystallization is related to symmetry breaking at the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) mean-field level\], the number of publications8-17,24-40 addressing the formation and properties of Wigner (or electron) molecules in 2D QD’s and quantum dot molecules has grown steadily. A consensus has been reached that rotating electron molecules are formed both in zero yl1 ; cre1 ; gra1 ; yl2 ; gra2 ; loz1 ; man1 ; gra3 ; pee1 ; loz2 ; yl3 ; yl4 ; loz3 ; mik1 ; mik2 ; mik3 ; nie1 ; yl8  and highmk ; sek ; mak1 ; rua ; yl2 ; mak2 ; cre2m ; yl5 ; ron1m ; sba  magnetic fields.

At $`B=0`$, formation of REM’s in QD’s is analogous to Wigner crystallization in infinite 2D media, i.e., when the strength of the interelectron repulsion relative to the zero-point kinetic energy ($`R_W`$) exceeds a certain critical value, electrons spontaneously crystallize around sites forming geometric molecular structures. At high magnetic fields, the formation of Wigner molecules may be thought of as involving a two-step crystallization process: (I) the localization of electrons results from the shrinkage of the orbitals due to the increasing strength of the magnetic field; (II) then, even a weak interelectron Coulomb repulsion is able to arrange the localized electrons according to geometric molecular structures (thus this process is independent of the value of $`R_W`$). It has been foundmk ; mak1 ; yl2  that the molecular structures at high $`B`$ coincide with the equilibrium configurations at $`B=0`$ of $`N`$ classical point charges.bed ; bol

Due to the finite number, $`N`$, of electrons, however, there are two crucial differences between the REM and the bulk Wigner crystal. Namely, (I) the crystalline structure is that of the equilibrium 2D configuration of $`N`$ classical point charges, and thus consists of nested polygonal rings; note24  (II) the Wigner molecules rotate as a whole (collective rotations) in analogy with the case of 3D natural molecules.

A most striking observation concerning the REM’s is that their formation and properties have been established with the help of traditional ab initio many-body methods, i.e., exact diagonalization, cre1 ; yl3 ; mik3 ; sek ; mak1 ; rua ; ron1m  quantum Monte Carlogra1 ; loz1 ; loz2 ; nie1  (QMC), and the systematic controlled hierarchyyl1 ; yl2 ; yl4 ; loz3 ; mk ; yl5 ; sba ; yl8  of approximations involving the UHF and subsequent post-Hartree-Fock methods. This contrasts with the case of the CF/JL wave functions, which were inspired through “intuition-based guesswork”.

In spite of its firm foundation in many-body theory, however, the REM picture has not, until recently, successfully competed with the CF/JL picture; indeed many research papersjai2 ; gr ; yang ; tau ; man2 ; rez ; rez2 ; nie2  and bookshaw  describe the physics of QD’s in high magnetic fields following exclusively notions based on CF/JL functions, as expounded in 1983 (see Ref. lau1, ) and developed in detail in 1995 in Ref. jai1,  and Ref. jai4, . We believe that one of the main obstacles for more frequent use of the REM picture has been the lack of analytic correlated wave functions associated with this picture. This situation, however, has changed with the recent explicit derivation of such REM wave functions. yl5

The approach used in Ref. yl5,  for constructing the REM functions in high $`B`$ consists of two-steps: First the breaking of the rotational symmetry at the level of the single-determinantal unrestricted Hartree-Fock approximation yields states representing electron molecules (or finite crystallites, also referred to as Wigner molecules, see Ref. yl1,  and Ref. yl2, ). Subsequently the rotation of the electron molecule is described through restoration of the circular symmetry via post Hartree-Fock methods, and in particular Projection Techniques.rs  Naturally, the restoration of symmetry goes beyond the single determinantal mean-field description and yields multi-determinantal wave functions. For QD’s, we have shown that the method of symmetry restoration is applicable to both the zeroyl4 ; yl8  and highyl5  magnetic-field cases.

In the zero and low-field cases, the broken symmetry UHF orbitals need to be determined numerically, and, in addition, the restoration of the total-spin symmetry needs to be considered for unpolarized and partially polarized cases. The formalism and mathematical details of this procedure at $`B=0`$ have been elaborated in Ref. yl4,  (see also Ref. yl6,  and Ref. yl7, ) for the restoration of the total spin in the case of quantum dot molecules).

In the case of high magnetic fields, one can specifically consider the limit when the confining potential can be neglected compared to the confinement induced by the magnetic field. Then, assuming a symmetric gauge, the UHF orbitals can be represented yl5 ; mz  by displaced Gaussian analytic functions, centered at different positions $`Z_jX_j+ıY_j`$ according to the equilibrium configuration of $`N`$ classical point chargesbed ; bol  arranged at the vertices of nested regular polygons (each Gaussian representing a localized electron). Such displaced Gaussians are written as (here and in the following $`ı\sqrt{1}`$)

$`u(z`$ , $`Z_j)=(1/\sqrt{\pi })`$ (1)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{exp}[|zZ_j|^2/2]\mathrm{exp}[ı(xY_jyX_j)],`$
where the phase factor is due to the gauge invariance. $`zx+ıy`$ (see Ref. note5, ), and all lengths are in dimensionless units of $`l_B\sqrt{2}`$ with the magnetic length being $`l_B=\sqrt{\mathrm{}c/eB}`$.

In Ref. yl5, , we used these analytic orbitals to first construct the broken symmetry UHF determinant, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_N^{\text{UHF}}`$, and then proceeded to derive analytic expressions for the many-body REM wave functions by applying onto $`\mathrm{\Psi }_N^{\text{UHF}}`$ an appropriate projection operatoryl5  $`𝒪_L`$ that restores the circular symmetry and generates correlatednote23  wave functions with good total angular momentum $`L`$. These REM wave functions can be easily written downyl5  in second-quantized form for any classical polygonal ring arrangement $`(n_1,n_2,\mathrm{})`$ by following certain simple rules for determining the coefficients of the determinants $`D(l_1,l_2,\mathrm{},l_N)\text{det}[z_1^{l_1},z_2^{l_2},\mathrm{},z_N^{l_N}]`$, where the $`l_j`$’s denote the angular momenta of the individual electrons. Since we will focus here on the case of $`N=6`$ and $`N=3`$ electrons, we list for completeness the REM functions associated with the $`(0,N)`$ and $`(1,N1)`$ ring arrangements, respectively \[here $`(0,N)`$ denotes a regular polygon with $`N`$ vertices, such as an equilateral triangle or a regular hexagon, and $`(1,N1)`$ is a regular polygon with $`N1`$ vertices and one occupied site in its center\],

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_L(0,N)`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{0l_1<l_2<\mathrm{}<l_N}{\overset{l_1+\mathrm{}+l_N=L}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}l_i!\right)^1`$ (2)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \underset{1i<jN}{}}\mathrm{sin}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{N}}(l_il_j)\right]\right)`$
$`\times D(l_1,l_2,\mathrm{},l_N)\mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}z_iz_i^{}/2),`$
with

$$L=L_0+Nm,m=0,1,2,3,\mathrm{},$$
(3)
and

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_L(1,`$ $`N`$ $`1)={\displaystyle }^{l_2+\mathrm{}+l_N=L}_{1l_2<l_3<\mathrm{}<l_N}({\displaystyle \underset{i=2}{\overset{N}{}}}l_i!)^1`$ (4)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \underset{2i<jN}{}}\mathrm{sin}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{N1}}(l_il_j)\right]\right)`$
$`\times D(0,l_2,\mathrm{},l_N)\mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}z_iz_i^{}/2),`$
with

$$L=L_0+(N1)m,m=0,1,2,3,\mathrm{},$$
(5)
where $`L_0=N(N1)/2`$ is the minimum allowed total angular momentum for $`N`$ (polarized) electrons in high magnetic fields.

Notice that the REM wave functions \[Eq. (2) and Eq, (4)\] vanish identically for values of the total angular momenta outside the specific values given by Eq. (3) and Eq. (5), respectively.

## III Outline of Composite-Fermion theory

According to the CF picture,jai1  the many body wave functions in high magnetic fields that describe $`N`$-electrons in the disc geometry (case of 2D QD’s) are given by the expression,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_L^{\text{CF}}(N)=𝒫_{\text{LLL}}\underset{1i<jN}{}(z_iz_j)^{2m}\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}},$$
(6)
where $`z=x+ıy`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}}`$ is the Slater determinant of $`N`$ non-interacting electrons of total angular momentum $`L^{}`$; it is constructed according to the Independent Particle Model (IPM) from the Darwin-Fockdf  orbitals $`\psi _{p,l}(z)`$, where $`p`$ and $`l`$ are the number of nodes and the angular momentum, respectively \[for the values of $`p`$ and $`l`$ in the $`n`$th Landau level in high $`B`$, see the paragraph following equation (7) below\].

The Jastrow factor in front of $`\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}}`$ is introduced to represent the effect of the interelectron Coulombic interaction. In the CF literature, this assumption is often described by saying that “the Jastrow factor binds $`2m`$ vortices to each electron of $`\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}}`$ to convert it into a composite fermion”.

The single-particle electronic orbitals in the Slater determinant $`\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}}`$ are not restricted to the lowest Landau level (LLL). As a result, it is necessary to apply a projection operator $`𝒫_{\text{LLL}}`$ to guarantee that the CF wave function lies in the LLL, as appropriate for $`B\mathrm{}`$.

Since the CF wave function is an homogeneous polynomial in the electronic positions $`z_j`$’s, its angular momentum $`L`$ is related to the non-interacting total angular momentum $`L^{}`$ as follows,

$$L=L^{}+mN(N1)=L^{}+2mL_0.$$
(7)
There is no reason to a priori restrict the Slater determinants $`\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}}`$ to a certain form, but according to Ref. jai1, , such a restriction is absolutely necessary in order to derive systematic results. Thus following Ref. jai1, , henceforth, we will restrict the non-interacting $`L^{}`$ to the range $`L_0L^{}L_0`$, and we will assume that the Slater determinants $`\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{}^{\text{IPM}}`$ are the so-called compact ones. Let $`N_n`$ denote the number of electrons in the $`n`$th Landau Level (LL) with $`_{n=0}^tN_n=N`$; $`t`$ is the index of the highest occupied LL and all the lower LL’s with $`nt`$ are assumed to be occupied. The compact determinants are defined as those in which the $`N_n`$ electrons occupy contiguously the single-particle orbitals (of each $`n`$th LL) with the lowest angular momenta, $`l=n,n+1,\mathrm{},n+N_n1`$ $`[p+(|l|l)/2=n]`$. The compact Slater determinants are usually denoted as $`[N_0,N_1,\mathrm{},N_t]`$, and the corresponding total angular momenta are given by $`L^{}=(1/2)_{s=0}^tN_s(N_s2s1)`$.

Most important for our present study is the fact that the Jastrow-Laughlin wave functions with angular momentum $`L=(2m+1)L_0`$ \[corresponding to fractional filling factors $`\nu =L_0/L=1/(2m+1)`$\],

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_L^{\text{JL}}(N)=\underset{1i<jN}{}(z_iz_j)^{2m+1}\mathrm{exp}\left(\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}z_kz_k^{}/2\right),$$
(8)
are a special case of the CF functions for $`L^{}=L_0`$, i.e.,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_L^{\text{JL}}(N)=\mathrm{\Phi }_L^{\text{CF}}(N;L^{}=L_0),L=(2m+1)L_0.$$
(9)
Note that for $`L^{}=L_0`$, all the non-interacting electrons occupy contiguous states in the LLL ($`n=0`$) with $`l=0,1,\mathrm{},N1`$.

The CF/JL wave functions \[equations (6) and (8)\] are represented by compact, one-line mathematical expressions, which however are not the most convenient for carrying out numerical calculations. Numerical studies of the CF/JL functions usually employ sophisticated Monte Carlo computational techniques. The REM wave functions, on the other hand, are by construction expressed in second-quantized (superposition of Slater determinants) form, precisely like the wave functions from exact diagonalization, a fact that greatly simplifies the numerical work. In the numerical calculations involving JL wave functions in this paper, we have circumvented the need to use Monte Carlo techniques, since we were able to determine the Slater decompositionnote1  of the JL states with the help of the symbolic language MATHEMATICA.math

We stress again that, unlike the REM functions, the CF/JL wave functions have not been derived microscopically, i.e., from the many-body Schrödinger equation with interelectron Coulombic repulsions. Attempts have been made to justify them a posteriori by pointing out that their overlaps with exact wave functions are close to unity or that their energies are close to the exact energies. However, we will show below that this agreement is limited to rather narrow ranges of filling factors between $`1\nu 1/3`$ or to small electron numbers $`N`$; as soon as one extends the comparisons to a broader range of $`\nu `$’s for $`N6`$, as well as to other quantities like electron densitiess and occupation number distributions, this agreement markedly deteriorates.

## IV Exact diagonalization results and comparisons

In the case of high magnetic fields, the Hilbert space for exact-diagonalization calculations can be restricted to the LLL and many such calculations have been reportedsek ; mak1 ; jai2 ; haw ; yang ; rez ; lau2 ; gir ; sto ; mac ; kash ; tsi ; kasn  in the past twenty years. However, for $`N5`$, such EXD studies have been restricted to angular momenta corresponding to the rather narrow range of fillings factors $`1\nu 1/3`$.

In this paper, we have performed systematic EXD calculations in the LLL for $`N=6`$ electrons covering the much broader range of fillings factors $`1\nu 1/9`$; such a range corresponds to angular momenta $`15L140`$ (note that for $`\nu =1/3`$ one has $`L=45`$). Of crucial importance for extending the calculations to such large $`L`$’s has been our use of Tsiper’stsi2  analytic formula for calculating the two-body matrix elements of the Coulomb interelectron repulsion; this formula expresses the matrix elements as finite sums of positive terms. Earlier analytic formulasgir  suffered from large cancellation errors due to summations over alternating positive and negative terms. At the same time, Tsiper’s formula is computationally faster compared to the slowly-convergent series of Ref. sto, .

For the solution of the large scale, but sparse, Coulomb eigenvalue problem, we have used the ARPACK computer code.arp  For a given $`L`$, the Hilbert space is built out of Slater determinants,

$$D(l_1,l_2,\mathrm{},l_N)\mathrm{exp}(\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}z_iz_i^{}/2),$$
(10)
with

$$l_1<l_2<\mathrm{}<l_N,\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}l_k=L,$$
(11)
and its dimensions are controlled by the maximum allowed single-particle angular momentum $`l_{\text{max}}`$, such that $`l_kl_{\text{max}}`$, $`1kN`$. We have used $`l_{\text{max}}=l_{\text{max}}^{\text{JL}}+5=10(m+1)`$ (see Ref. note1,  for the definition of $`l_{\text{max}}^{\text{JL}}`$) for each group of angular momenta $`L`$ corresponding to the range $`1/(2m+1)\nu <1/(2m1)`$, $`m=1,2,3,4`$. For example, for $`L=105`$, $`l_{\text{max}}=40`$ and the dimension of the Hilbert space is 56115; for $`L=135`$, $`l_{\text{max}}=50`$ and the size of the Hilbert space is 187597. By varying $`l_{\text{max}}`$, we have checked that this choice produces well converged numerical results.

### IV.1 Predictions of magic angular momenta

Foe $`N=6`$, Figs. 1-4 display (in four installments) the total interaction energy from EXD as a function of the total angular momentum $`L`$ in the range $`19L140`$. (The total kinetic energy, being a constant, can be disregarded.) One can immediately observe the appearance of downward cusps, implying states of enhanced stability, at certain “magic angular momenta”.

For the CF theory, the magic angular momenta can be determined by Eq. (7), if one knows the non-interacting $`L^{}`$’s; the CF magic $`L`$’s in any interval $`1/(2m1)\nu 1/(2m+1)`$ $`[15(2m1)L15(2m+1)]`$, $`m=1,2,3,4,\mathrm{}`$, can be found by adding $`2mL_0=30m`$ units of angular momentum to each of the $`L^{}`$’s. To obtain the non-interacting $`L^{}`$’s, one needs first to constructsek ; jai1  the compact Slater determinants. The compact determinants and the corresponding non-interacting $`L^{}`$’s are listed in Table 1.

There are nine different values of $`L^{}`$’s, and thus the CF theory for $`N=6`$ predicts that there are always nine magic numbers in any interval $`15(2m1)L15(2m+1)`$ between two consecutive JL angular momenta $`15(2m1)`$ and $`15(2m+1)`$, $`m=1,2,3,\mathrm{}`$ (henceforth we will denote this interval as $`_m`$). For example, using Table 1 and Eq. (7), the CF magic numbers in the interval $`15L45`$ ($`m=1`$) are found to be the following nine,note2

$$15,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}21},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}25},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}27},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}30},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}33},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}35},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}39},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}45}.$$
(12)
On the other hand, in the interval $`105L135`$ ($`m=4`$), the CF theory predicts the following set of nine magic numbers,

$$105,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}111},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}115},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}117},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}120},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}123},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}125},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}129},\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}135}.$$
(13)
An inspection of the total-energy-vs.-L plots in Figs. 1-4 reveals that the CF prediction badly misses the actual magic angular momenta specified by the EXD calculations as those associated with the downward cusps. Indeed it is immediately apparent that the number of downward cusps in any interval $`_m`$ is always different from 9. Indeed, there are 10 cusps in $`_1`$ (including that at $`L=15`$, not shown in Fig. 1), 10 in $`_2`$ (see Fig. 2), 7 in $`_3`$ (see Fig. 3), and 7 in $`_4`$ (see Fig. 4). In detail, the CF theory fails in the following two aspects: (I) There are exact magic numbers that are consistently missing from the CF prediction in every interval; with the exception of the lowest $`L=20`$, these exact magic numbers (marked by a long downward arrow in the figures) are given by $`L=10(3m1)`$ and $`L=10(3m+1)`$, $`m=1,2,3,4,\mathrm{}`$; (II) There are CF magic numbers that do not correspond to downward cusps in the EXD calculations (marked by medium-size downward arrows in the figures). This happens because cusps associated with $`L`$’s whose difference from $`L_0`$ is divisible by 6 (but not simultaneously by 5) progressively weaken and completely disappear in the intervals $`_m`$ with $`m3`$; only cusps with the difference $`LL_0`$ divisible by 5 survive. On the other hand, the CF model predicts the appearance of four magic numbers with $`LL_0`$ divisible solely by 6 in every interval $`_m`$, at $`L=30m9`$ and $`30m3`$, $`m=1,2,3,\mathrm{}`$ The overall extent of the inadequacy of the CF model can be appreciated better by the fact that there are six false predictions (long and medium-size downward arrows) in every interval $`_m`$ with $`m3`$, compared to only five correct ones (small downward arrows, see Fig. 3 and Fig. 4).

In contrast to the CF model, the magic angular momenta in the REM theory are associated with the polygonal ring configurations of $`N`$ classical point charges. This is due to the fact that the enhanced stability of the downward cusps results from the coherent collective rotation of the regular-polygon REM structures. Due to symmetry requirements, such collective rotation can take place only at magic-angular-momenta values. The in-between angular momenta require the excitation of additional degrees of freedom (like the center of mass and/or vibrational modes), which raises the total energy with respect to the values associated with the magic angular momenta.

For $`N=6`$, the lowest in energy ring configuration is the (1,5), while there exists a (0,6) isomerbed ; bol  with higher energy. As a result, our EXD calculations (as well as earlier onessek ; mak2 ; rua  for lower angular momenta $`L70`$) have found that there exist two sequences of magic angular momenta, a primary one $`(S_p)`$ with $`L=15+5m`$ \[see Eq. (3)\], associated with the most stable (1,5) classical molecular configuration, and a secondary one $`(S_s)`$ with $`L=15+6m`$ \[see Eq. (5)\], associated with the metastable $`(0,6)`$ ring arrangement. Furthermore, our calculations (see also Refs. rua, ; mak2, ) show that the secondary sequence $`S_s`$ contributes only in a narrow range of the lowest angular momenta; in the region of higher angular momenta, the primary sequence $`S_p`$ is the only one that survives and the magic numbers exhibit a period of five units of angular momentum. It is interesting to note that the initial competition between the primary and secondary sequences, and the subsequent prevalence of the primary one, has been seen in other sizes as well,rua  i.e., $`N=5,7,8`$. Furthermore, this competition is reflected in the field-induced molecular phase transitions associated with broken symmetry UHF solutions in a parabolic QD. Indeed, Ref. sba,  demonstrated recently that, as a function of increasing $`B`$, the UHF solutions for $`N=6`$ first depict the transformation of the maximum-density-dropletmac2  into the (0,6) molecular configuration; then (at higher $`B`$) the (1,5) configuration replaces the (0,6) structure as the one having the lower HF energy.note3

The extensive comparisons in this subsection lead inevitably to the conclusion that the CF model cannot explain the systematic trends exhibited by the magic angular momenta in 2D QD’s in high magnetic fields. These trends, however, were shown to be a natural consequence of the formation of REM’s and their metastable isomers.

### IV.2 Radial electron densities

We turn now our attention to a comparison of the radial electron densities (ED’s). Fig. 5 displays the corresponding ED’s from EXD, REM, and CF/JL wave functions at three representative total angular momenta, i.e., $`L=75`$ $`(\nu =1/5)`$, $`105`$ $`(1/7)`$, and $`135`$ $`(1/9)`$.

An inspection of Fig. 5 immediately reveals that (I) The EXD radial ED’s (solid lines) exhibit a prominent oscillation corresponding to the $`(1,5)`$ molecular structure (averaged over the azimuthal angles). Indeed the integral of the exact ED’s from the origin to the minimum point between the two humps is practically equal to unity; (II) There is very good agreement between the REM (dashed lines) and exact ED’s; this agreement improves with higher angular momentum; (III) The JL ED’s (dotted lines ) miss the oscillation of the exact ED in all three cases in a substantial way.

The inability of the radial ED’s calculated with the JL functions to capture the oscillations exhibited by the exact ones was also seen recently for the $`\nu =1/3`$ case and for all electron numbers $`N=6,7,8,9,10,11,12`$ in Ref. tsi,  (see in particular Fig. 1 therein). We further note that the oscillations of the exact ED’s in that figure correspond fully to the classical molecular ring arrangements listed in Ref. bed, , e.g., to (1,7) for $`N=8`$ and to (3,9) for $`N=12`$, in agreement with our rotating-electron-molecule interpretation.

### IV.3 Distribution of occupation numbers

In this subsection, we address the behavior of the occupation-number distribution $`n(l)=\mathrm{\Phi }|a_l^{}a_l|\mathrm{\Phi }`$ as a function of the single-particle angular momentum $`l`$, where the creation and annihilation operators refer to the single-electron states $`\psi _{0,l}(z)`$ in the LLL. For $`N=6`$, Fig. 6 displays the $`n(l)`$’s from all three families of wave functions, i.e., EXD (solid circles), REM (open circles), and JL (crosses), and for the three representative angular momenta $`L=75`$ $`(\nu =1/5)`$, $`105`$ $`(1/7)`$, and $`135`$ $`(1/9)`$.

Again, an inspection of Fig. 6 immediately reveals that (I) The EXD occupation numbers exhibit a prominent oscillation corresponding to the $`(1,5)`$ molecular structure. Indeed the sum of the exact $`n(l)`$’s from $`l=0`$ to the minimum point between the two humps is practically equal to unity; (II) There is very good agreement between the REM and exact occupation numbers; this agreement improves with higher angular momentum; (III) For all three cases, the JL occupation numbers exhibit a systematically different trend and they are not able to capture the oscillatory behavior of the EXD occupation numbers.

We further note that a substantial discrepancy between JL and EXD occupation numbers was also noted in Ref. kash,  for the case of $`N=7`$ electrons and $`\nu =1/3`$ $`(L=63)`$.

The systematic deviations between the JL and EXD ED’s and occupation numbers inevitably points to the conclusion that these two families of wave functions represent very different many-body physical problems. Indeed, the JL functions have been foundhk  to be exact solutions for a special class of short-range two-body forces, while the EXD functions faithfully reflect the long-range character of the Coulombic interelectron repulsion. On the other hand, as discussed in Ref. yl5, , the REM wave functions, derived through a traditional many-body approach, are able to capture the correlations arising from the long-range character of the Coulomb force; the oscillatory behavior of the EXD and REM ED’s and occupation numbers (associated with formation of Wigner molecules) constitutes a prominent and unmistaken signature of such Coulombic correlations.

### IV.4 Comparison of overlaps and total energies

We turn now our attention to the overlaps of the REM and JL wave functions with those obtained through exact diagonalization. We start by listing in Table 2 the overlaps for the simpler case of $`N=3`$ electrons in high magnetic fields. One sees immediately that these overlaps are all very close to unity $`(0.99)`$ for both the REM and JL cases and for even rather high angular momenta \[e.g., $`L=39`$ $`(\nu =1/13)`$\].

Ever since they were calculated by Laughlin in his original paper,lau1  the JL overlaps for $`N=3`$ electrons have exercised a great influence in the literature of the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). Indeed, in a rather sweeping generalization to any $`N`$ and $`L`$ (note that Ref. tsi,  has indeed found that the JL overlaps for $`\nu =1/3`$ remain very close to unity for all cases with $`5N12`$), the close-to-unity values of the JL overlaps have been presumed to provide “proof” that the CF/JL functions approximate very well the corresponding exact many-body wave functions; as we have already shown earlier, this presumption is highly questionable.

We have calculated the overlaps for $`N=6`$ electrons and for the three representative higher angular-momentum values $`L=75`$ $`(\nu =1/5)`$, $`105`$ $`(1/7)`$, and $`135`$ $`(1/9)`$; the results are listed in Table 3 for both the REM and JL wave functions. A most remarkable feature of the results in Table 3 is that the extraordinary, higher than 0.99 values (familiar from Laughlin’ s paperlau1 ) are totally absent. Instead, the JL overlaps rapidly deteriorate for higher $`L`$’s (lower $`\nu `$’s), and for $`\nu =1/9`$ they have attained values below 0.67. In contrast, the REM overlaps remain above 0.80 and slowly approach unity as $`L`$ increases.

From our results for $`\nu 1/5`$ and the results of Ref. tsi,  for $`\nu =1/3`$, it is apparent that the overlaps alone are not a reliable index for assessing the agreement or disagreement between trial and exact wave functions. For example, for $`N=6`$ and $`L=75`$ $`(\nu =1/5)`$, Table 3 shows that the JL and REM overlaps are close to each other (0.837 vs. 0.817). However, as the earlier analyses based on the electron densities and occupation numbers show, the JL wave function is not a good approximation to the exact one; in contrast, the REM wave function offers a much better description.

In addition to the overlaps, earlier studies (see, e.g., Ref. jai2, ) have also relied on the total energies for assessing the agreement, or not, between CF and exact wave functions. We thus list in Table 4 the total energies for $`N=6`$ and for the three representative higher angular-momentum values $`L=75`$ $`(\nu =1/5)`$, $`105`$ $`(1/7)`$, and $`135`$ $`(1/9)`$. It is seen that both the JL and REM total energies exhibit very small relative errors compared to the corresponding EXD ones in all three instances, a fact that indicates that, by themselves, the total energiesnote22  are an even less reliable index compared to the overlaps. In particular, note that for $`N=6`$ and $`L=135`$, the JL and exact total energies differ only in the third decimal point, while at the same time the JL overlap is only 0.665 (see Table 3)!

### IV.5 Exponents of current-voltage power law

Another quantity of theoretical and experimental interest is the ratio

$$\alpha =\frac{n(l_{\text{max}}^{\text{JL}}1)}{n(l_{\text{max}}^{\text{JL}})},$$
(14)
of the corresponding occupation numbers at $`l_{\text{max}}^{\text{JL}}1`$ and $`l_{\text{max}}^{\text{JL}}`$. The interest in this ratio is due to the following two facts: (I) The value of $`\alpha `$ for the JL function at different fractional fillings has a particular analytic value,mit ; wen ; gt  i.e., it is given by $`\alpha ^{\text{JL}}(\nu )=1/\nu =2m+1`$, $`m=1,2,3,4,\mathrm{}`$; (II) $`\alpha `$ happens to enter as the exponentwen ; gt  of the voltage in the current-voltage law, $`IV^\alpha `$, for external electron tunneling into an edge of a fractional quantum Hall system. Recent investigations have found that both the experimentalchan  and computedgt  EXD value of $`\alpha `$ at $`\nu =1/3`$ deviates from the JL prediction of 3, being in all instances somewhat smaller (i.e., $`2.7`$).

Table 5 displays the values of $`\alpha `$ for $`N=6`$ and for the JL, REM, and EXD wave functions at various values of the total angular momentum $`L`$. We have checked that our numerical values for $`\alpha ^{\text{JL}}`$ (derived by dividing the proper $`n^{\text{JL}}`$’s; see Fig. 6) are equal to $`2m+1`$ within the numerical accuracy. As seen from Table 5, a most striking weakness of the JL functions is that the corresponding $`\alpha ^{\text{JL}}`$’s diverge as $`L\mathrm{}`$, a behavior which contrasts sharply with the EXD values that remain at all times finite and somewhat smaller than 3. Such a dramatic difference in behavior should be possible to be checked experimentally. Furthermore, we note that the REM values, although somewhat smaller, they are close to the EXD ones and remain bounded as $`L\mathrm{}`$.

We conclude that this dramatic qualitative and quantitative weakness of the JL functions is due to their being exact solutions of a family of short range interparticle forces.hk  On the other hand, as we have stressed earlier in this paper and in Ref. yl5, , the REM functions are able to capture the essential effects of the correlations associated with the long-range Coulomb force; thus, in agreement with the EXD results, the REM $`\alpha `$ values remain finite as $`L\mathrm{}`$.

## V summary

Exact diagonalization (EXD) results for the lowest rotational band of a circular QD with $`N=6`$ electrons in strong magnetic fields were reportednote21  here for the first time in the range of high angular momenta $`70L140`$ (covering the corresponding range of fractional filling factors $`1/5\nu 1/9`$). These EXD results were used in a thorough assessment of the ability of the composite-fermionjai3 /Jastrow-Laughlinlau1  and rotating-electron-moleculeyl5  trial wave functions to approximate the exact wave functions in the case of 2D QD’s.

A detailed comparison (addressing five properties, i.e., prediction of magic angular momenta, radial electron densities, occupation number distributions, overlaps and total energies, and exponents of current-voltage power law) shows that the REM many-body wave functions provide a description that is superior to that obtained through the CF/JL ones. An important finding is that “global” quantities (like overlaps and total energies) are not particularly reliable indices for comparing exact and trial wave functions; a reliable decision on the agreement, or lack of it, between exact and trial wave functions should include detailed comparisons of quantities like radial electron densities and/or occupation number distributions.

We finally note that the CF/JL wave functions have been most useful for the modeling of the bulk fractional quantum Hall effect. However, the theoretical investigations concerning the bulk system have unavoidably, due to computational limitations, relied on finite-size systems to assess the validity of the CF/JL wave functions. Thus it is natural to conjecture that the unexpected finding of this paper, i.e., that the CF/JL functions exhibit remarkable weaknesses in reproducing the exact wave functions of QD’s in high $`B`$, may have ramifications for our present understanding of the fractional quantum Hall effect itself. Investigations of such probable ramifications, and related questions concerning the domain of validity of the REM and CF/JL wave functions in the bulk, will be addressed in future publications. In the present paper, we focused on the case of QD’s, which constitute a theoretically self-contained problem when exact-diagonalization calculations become available; in the near future, a wider range of such calculations will be within reach, due to new generations of powerful computers.

This research is supported by the U.S. D.O.E. (Grant No. FG05-86ER-45234). Computations were carried out at the Georgia Tech Center for Computational Materials Science and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC).


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Field theoretical models with extra dimensions typically include one or more lower dimensional defects on which some fields can be localized. These defects (“branes” from now on) can have different microscopic realizations: D-branes, domain walls, cosmic strings, orbifold fixed points, …. In general, the fields propagating in all the dimensions (bulk fields) couple to fields propagating on the branes . Moreover, it is possible that the action includes terms localized on the branes involving only bulk fields (“brane terms”, for short). They may have important consequences. A crucial observation is that brane terms are induced by radiative corrections. This is allowed as Poincaré invariance is broken by the branes. Quantum divergences localized on the branes can appear in the correlators of bulk fields when the bulk fields are coupled to fields living on them . Furthermore, in orbifolds this can occur even in the absence of brane couplings at tree level . In any case, it is clear that the presence of divergent radiative corrections localized on the branes requires the introduction of divergent brane counterterms. Therefore, the corresponding brane couplings run with the renormalization scale, and cannot be set to zero at all scales. Furthermore, this indicates that they should be considered free parameters of the theory and be included at tree level (see  for a detailed argument). Of course, since interacting theories in higher dimensions are nonrenormalizable, these considerations are only meaningful in the framework of effective field theory, and it is important to take into account possible suppressions of the brane couplings by inverse powers of the cutoff scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

Brane terms are always suppressed by $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^n`$, $`n1`$, with respect to the analogous bulk terms. Therefore one would expect that their effect on observables should be a small perturbation of the corresponding results without brane terms. In this article we show that, contrary to this expectation, certain brane operators modify severely some observables—like Kaluza-Klein (KK) masses—even when their coefficients are very small. This breakdown of perturbation theory has to do with the interplay between the thin brane limit and the limit of large $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, in which the coefficients of the brane operators approach zero. Unless otherwise stated, we will always consider infinitely thin, delta-function branes, although we will often make use of thick branes as intermediate regulators. On the other hand, the underlying fundamental theory is usually assumed to be smooth in its parameters, so that all its low energy predictions should be perturbatively calculable using some effective theory. From this point of view, the relevant question is how to incorporate in a low energy effective description a mechanism to make the expansion in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ well defined. Here we sketch a possible answer in the spirit of perturbative renormalization theory.

We shall concentrate on brane kinetic terms. Kinetic terms localized on a brane were first invoked by Dvali, Gabadadze and Porrati  to recover 4D gravitational behaviour at short distances in infinite extra dimensions. The same mechanism was subsequently applied in  to gauge theories. In , the one loop radiative corrections to brane terms and their first order impact on KK spectra were calculated in different theories. In , a detailed computation of infinite and finite radiative corrections to bulk and brane kinetic terms of gauge fields (with and without Hosotani mechanism) was performed. The phenomenology of gauge fields in compact dimensions with (tree-level) brane kinetic terms has been discussed recently in  (flat space) and  (warped space). A particular fermionic case has been addressed in . Finally, brane kinetic terms in supersymmetric models have been studied in . In all these works, brane kinetic terms are found to have a significant impact on model building and phenomenology. And, as observed above, they must be generically included for consistency.

Here we analyse at the classical level the effect of all the possible $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ brane kinetic terms for scalar, fermion and gauge fields. In particular we examine brane terms containing derivatives with respect to the coordinates orthogonal to the brane. These terms have not been studied in detail before111Except in , where the singular terms were “massaged” via a classical renormalization. We compare this approach with ours in Section 5.. We find that they give rise to solutions to the equations of motion which exhibit a rather singular behaviour: they decouple from the brane and become insensitive to the magnitude of all brane couplings; furthermore, physical observables for arbitrarily small coefficients of these terms do not approach the ones for vanishing coefficients. This is related to the appearance of $`\delta (0)`$ singularities at second and higher orders in the $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ expansion. These singularities are a common feature of field theoretical models with infinitely thin branes . We also study brane kinetic terms in supersymmetric theories and find that supersymmetry requires the presence of higher order kinetic terms in the on-shell action. These terms improve but do not cure the singular behaviour of the classical fields. More generally, any effective theory will contain higher order terms which may significantly change the solutions derived from the first order Lagrangian. One can then hope that these terms be such that the exact solutions are smooth in all the parameters of the theory. We will discuss this possibility below. Although most of our considerations apply to general field theories in extra dimensions, for definiteness we study here theories defined on a flat 5D space with the 5th dimension compatified on an $`S^1/Z_2`$ orbifold. Moreover, in order to keep the discussion and calculations as simple as possible, we neglect masses and consider kinetic terms localized on only one of the fixed points (even if kinetic terms on both branes are natural and lead to interesting phenomenology ).

The structure of the paper is as follows. In Section 2 we perform the exact KK reduction of the free action for particles of spin $`1`$ in the presence of general brane kinetic terms. In Section 3 we study the supersymmetric case. In Section 4 we examine in detail an example elucidating the role of thin brane singularities. In Section 5 we argue that classical renormalization makes the theory smooth and perturbation theory well defined. This is also interpreted as the restriction to a subclass of effective theories with particular reductions of couplings. We summarize and discuss our results in Section 6. Finally, we collect in Appendix A the general first order results, and give an example of renormalization in Appendix B.

## 2 Exact KK reduction

In this section we study the exact (i.e., nonperturbative) KK reduction of the most general free action with leading order brane terms for massless scalars, gauge bosons and fermions propagating in $`M_4\times S^1/Z_2`$. We consider fields which are functions of the coordinates $`x^\mu `$, $`\mu =0,1,2,3`$ of $`M_4`$ and $`y(\pi R,\pi R]`$, of $`S^1`$, and which are eigenstates of $`Z_2`$, i.e., even or odd functions of $`y`$. For simplicity, we only include brane terms at the fixed point $`y=0`$.

Some of the operators we consider are products of two odd factors times a delta function. These terms are sometimes argued to vanish on parity grounds. However, these arguments are no longer valid when the (derivatives of) wave functions appearing in these terms develop discontinuities across the branes . Deriving and solving the equations of motion when the action contains this sort of terms is tricky , and the same applies to brane terms containing derivatives with respect to $`y`$.

In order to treat all these cases rigorously we regularize the branes using several (smooth) representations of the delta function, of width $`ϵ`$. We perform all the calculations with these resolved branes, and only take the thin brane limit $`ϵ0`$ at the very end. Furthermore, we employ different representations in order to check that our results are regularization independent. In some cases we have resorted to numerical methods to solve the relevant differential equations. Still, it is possible to see that the numerical solutions converge rapidly in the thin brane limit to certain functions, which we take as our analytical solutions. The reader can find an explicit analytical calculation in the simple case discussed in Section 4.

### 2.1 Scalars

The most general action for a massless complex five-dimensional scalar with leading order brane kinetic terms is222More generally we could consider a term $`\delta _0(\frac{b}{2}\varphi ^{}_y^2\varphi +\frac{b^{}}{2}_y^2\varphi ^{}\varphi )`$, but we take $`b`$ real for simplicity.

$`S=`$ $`{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}^4x{\displaystyle _{\pi R}^{\pi R}}\mathrm{d}y\{(1+a\delta _0)_\mu \varphi ^{}^\mu \varphi _y\varphi ^{}_y\varphi `$
$`+\delta _0[{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}(\varphi ^{}_y^2\varphi +_y^2\varphi ^{}\varphi )c_y\varphi ^{}_y\varphi ]\},`$ (2.1)
where $`\delta _0\delta (y)`$. The dimensionful parameters $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ are expected to be of order $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. In order to perform the KK reduction we expand

$$\varphi (x,y)=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{f_n(y)}{\sqrt{2\pi R}}\varphi ^{(n)}(x),$$
(2.2)
where $`\{f_n\}`$ is some basis of functions on $`(\pi R,\pi R]`$ with the same parity character as $`\varphi `$. Introducing (2.2) in the action we find

$`S=`$ $`{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}^4x{\displaystyle \underset{mn}{}}\{{\displaystyle _{\pi R}^{\pi R}}\mathrm{d}y(1+a\delta _0){\displaystyle \frac{f_mf_n}{2\pi R}}_\mu \varphi ^{(m)}^\mu \varphi ^{(n)}`$
$`+{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}y{\displaystyle \frac{f_m𝒪f_n}{2\pi R}}\varphi ^{(m)}\varphi ^{(n)}\},`$ (2.3)
where we have defined

$$𝒪[1+(b+c)\delta _0]_y^2+(b+c)\delta _0^{}_y+\frac{b}{2}\delta _0^{\prime \prime }.$$
(2.4)
In order to diagonalize the quadratic terms, we take $`\{f_n\}`$ as the set of eigenfunctions of the following generalised eigenvalue problem:

$$𝒪f_n=m_n^2\left(1+a\delta _0\right)f_n.$$
(2.5)
The fact that the operator $`𝒪`$ is hermitian and that the eigenvalues of (2.5) are nondegenerate, ensures the orthogonality of eigenfunctions with respect to the scalar product

$$<f,g>=\frac{1}{2\pi R}_{\pi R}^{\pi R}dy\left(1+a\delta _0\right)f(y)g(y).$$
(2.6)
Then, if we also impose, when possible, the normalization

$$<f_n,f_n>=1,$$
(2.7)
the free action reduces to

$$S=\mathrm{d}^4x\underset{n}{}\left\{_\mu \varphi ^{(n)}^\mu \varphi ^{(n)}m_n^2\varphi ^{(n)}\varphi ^{(n)}\right\}.$$
(2.8)
The generalised eigenvalue equation (2.5) is to be solved with the appropriate orbifold constraints.

When $`b<0`$ or $`c<0`$, it turns out that, for finite (small enough) $`ϵ`$, the eigenfunctions diverge at some point near $`y=0`$. For this reason, we must require $`b0`$, $`c0`$ to have a well defined theory.

Let us now describe the exact solutions in the thin brane limit. For odd scalars, the wave functions and KK masses are insensitive to the brane terms. The wave functions are

$$f_n^{\mathrm{odd}}(y)=\sqrt{2}\mathrm{sin}(m_ny),$$
(2.9)
and the masses, $`m_n=n/R`$, with $`n`$ a positive integer333The derivatives of the wave functions, however, have discontinuous values at $`y=0`$ in the limit $`ϵ0`$, whenever $`c\overline{)}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}`$: $`f_n^{}(0)=0\overline{)}=f_n^{}(0^+)`$. This behaviour at the brane is the same as the one for the even component of a fermion, to be described below..

For even scalars, the wave functions and masses do not depend on the (positive) coefficient $`c`$ when $`ϵ0`$. We distinguish two cases:

* $`b=0`$. In this case, the solution coincides with the one described in . There is a constant massless mode, which depends on the brane terms only through its normalization:

$$f_0=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\frac{a}{2\pi R}}}.$$
(2.10)
The massive modes are given by

$$f_n(y)=A_n[\mathrm{cos}(m_ny)\frac{am_n}{2}\mathrm{sin}(m_n|y|)],$$
(2.11)
where $`A_n`$ is a normalization constant and the masses are the solutions of the equation

$$\mathrm{tan}(\pi Rm_n)+\frac{a}{2}m_n=0.$$
(2.12)
We observe that if $`2\pi Ra<0`$, there is a tachyonic mode, with squared mass approaching $`4/a^2`$ for small $`|a|/(2\pi R)`$. On the other hand, the norm squared defined by the scalar product (2.6), $`f^2=<f,f>`$, is indefinite. This can be problematic, since zero norm modes have vanishing kinetic term in the reduced 4D action (they cannot be normalized as in (2.7)), while modes with negative norm squared have the wrong sign in the reduced kinetic term (they are ghosts). We find that if $`a=2\pi R`$ the zero mode has zero norm, and if $`a<2\pi R`$ it has negative norm squared (the massive modes have always positive norm). Therefore, we see that for negative values of $`a`$ the theory is either pathological or unstable.
* $`b>0`$. In this case the solution is independent of all brane terms, including $`b`$ itself (as long as it is strictly positive). We find

$$f_n(y)=A_n\mathrm{sin}(m_n|y|),$$
(2.13)
with $`m_n=\frac{n+1/2}{R}`$ and $`n`$ integer. In particular, there is no zero mode.

We see that the KK spectrum and wave functions of even scalars change dramatically when an arbitrarily small $`b`$ is turned on. Note also that the wave functions vanish at $`y=0`$ when $`b>0`$.

### 2.2 Gauge Bosons

The Lagrangian for gauge bosons admits brane kinetic terms analogous to the ones for scalars, but with the restrictions of gauge invariance. Since we are only discussing the quadratic action, we can consider an abelian theory without loss of generality. For a gauge boson $`A_M`$ with general $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ kinetic terms on the first brane,

$$S=\mathrm{d}^4xdy\left\{\frac{1}{4}(1+a\delta _0)F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\frac{1}{2}(1+c\delta _0)F_{5\nu }F^{5\nu }\right\}.$$
(2.14)
The bulk and brane parts respect 5D and 4D Lorentz symmetry, respectively. The orbifold projection forces $`A_\mu `$ and $`A_5`$ to have opposite $`Z_2`$ parity. The whole Lagrangian is symmetric under the gauge transformations $`A_MA_M+_M\theta `$, where the gauge parameter $`\theta `$ has the same parity as $`A_\mu `$. Using a gauge $`A_5=0`$ or $`_MA^M=0`$ it is easy to see that the equations of motion are the same as the ones for scalars without $`b`$ terms. At the level of the action, these gauges can be imposed adding the corresponding gauge fixing terms. To perform the KK decomposition, however, we choose to work with the gauge invariant action. We expand

$`A_\mu (x,y)={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{f_n(y)}{\sqrt{2\pi R}}}A_\mu ^{(n)}(x),`$ (2.15)
$`A_5(x,y)={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{_yf_n(y)}{m_n\sqrt{2\pi R}}}A_5^{(n)}(x),`$ (2.16)
with $`A_5^{(0)}=0`$ if $`m_0=0`$, and require

$$𝒪f_n=m_n^2(1+a\delta _0)f_n,$$
(2.17)
with

$$𝒪(1+c\delta _0)_y^2+c\delta _0^{}_y.$$
(2.18)
Thanks to the form of the expansion of $`A_5`$ and the hermiticity of the differential operator $`𝒪`$, all the terms get diagonalized. To have canonical 4D kinetic terms we also impose the normalization condition (2.7). The eigenfunctions and eigenmasses can be read directly from the results for (even or odd) scalars with $`b=0`$. Again, there is no well defined solution for $`c<0`$, so we require $`c0`$. And for $`a<0`$ we have either tachyons or ghosts.

At the end we are left with the following 4D Lagrangian:

$$=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left\{\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }^{(n)}F^{\mu \nu (n)}+\frac{1}{2}_\mu A_5^{(n)}^\mu A_5^{(n)}+\frac{1}{2}m_n^2A_\mu ^{(n)}A^{(n)\mu }+m_nA_5^{(n)}_\mu A^{(n)\mu }\right\}.$$
(2.19)
This Lagrangian is invariant under an infinite set of 4D local transformations:

$`A_\mu ^{(n)}A_\mu ^{(n)}+_\mu \theta ^{(n)},`$ (2.20)
$`A_5^{(n)}A_5^{(n)}+m_n\theta ^{(n)},`$ (2.21)
which is nothing but the KK decomposition of 5D gauge transformations:

$$\theta (x,y)=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{f_n(y)}{\sqrt{2\pi R}}\theta ^{(n)}(x).$$
(2.22)
The scalars $`A_5^{(n)}`$ can be interpreted as Goldstone bosons of the spontaneously broken gauge transformations $`\theta ^{(n)}`$ (those with $`f_n(y)\overline{)}=\text{constant}`$). They can be decoupled from the 4D vector bosons $`A_\mu ^{(n)}`$ using an $`R_\xi `$ gauge. Indeed, adding to (2.19) the gauge fixing terms

$$\frac{1}{2\xi }\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(_\mu A^{(n)\mu }+\xi m_nA_5^{(n)})^2,$$
(2.23)
we find

$`^{}={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\{`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F_{\mu \nu }^{(n)}F^{\mu \nu (n)}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\xi }}(_\mu A^{(n)\mu })^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_n^2A_\mu ^{(n)}A^{(n)\mu }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_\mu A_5^{(n)}^\mu A_5^{(n)}`$
$`\xi m_n^2(A_5^{(n)})^2\}.`$ (2.24)
In the Feynman-’t Hooft gauge, $`\xi =1`$, the scalar fields $`A_5^{(n)}`$ have mass $`m_n`$, whereas in the unitary gauge, $`\xi \mathrm{}`$, these fields get infinite masses and decouple from the spectrum.

### 2.3 Fermions

Let us consider now the most general kinetic action for a five-dimensional bulk fermion $`\psi =\psi _L+\psi _R`$, with $`\gamma ^5\psi _{L,R}=\psi _{L,R}`$, and leading order brane contributions,

$`S=`$ $`{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}^4x{\displaystyle _{\pi R}^{\pi R}}\mathrm{d}y\{(1+a^L\delta _0)\overline{\psi }_L\mathrm{i}\overline{)}\psi _L+(1+a^R\delta _0)\overline{\psi }_R\mathrm{i}\overline{)}\psi _R`$
$`\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0\right)\overline{\psi }_L_y\psi _R{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0\left(_y\overline{\psi }_R\right)\psi _L`$
$`+(1+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}\delta _0)\overline{\psi }_R_y\psi _L+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}\delta _0\left(_y\overline{\psi }_L\right)\psi _R\}.`$ (2.25)
We have considered again real $`b`$ and $`c`$. The two chiralities have opposite parity. We take $`\psi _L`$ even for definiteness. The KK expansion of the fermions reads

$$\psi _{L,R}(x,y)=\underset{n}{}\frac{f_n^{L,R}(y)}{\sqrt{2\pi R}}\psi _{L,R}^{(n)}(x).$$
(2.26)
In order to diagonalize the 4D kinetic and mass terms, we take the wave functions $`f_n^{L,R}`$ to be the eigenfunctions of the following generalised eigenvalue problem:

$`𝒪_1f_n^R=`$ $`m_n(1+a^L\delta _0)f_n^L,`$ (2.27)
$`𝒪_2f_n^L=`$ $`m_n(1+a^R\delta _0)f_n^R,`$ (2.28)
where

$`𝒪_1=`$ $`[1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(b+c)\delta _0]_y+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}\delta _0^{},`$ (2.29)
$`𝒪_2=`$ $`[1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(b+c)\delta _0]_y+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0^{}.`$ (2.30)
Because $`𝒪_1^{}=𝒪_2`$, the functions $`f_n^{L,R}`$ are orthogonal with respect to the appropriate scalar products,

$$<f,g>_{L,R}=\frac{1}{2\pi R}_{\pi R}^{\pi R}\mathrm{d}y(1+a^{L,R}\delta _0)f(y)g(y).$$
(2.31)
We also impose the normalization conditions

$$<f_n^L,f_n^L>_L=<f_n^R,f_n^R>_R=1,$$
(2.32)
to render the 4D kinetic terms canonically normalized.

As in previous cases, we must require $`b,c0`$ to have well defined solutions. The solutions then depend on whether $`b`$ vanishes or not:

* $`b=0`$. There is a chiral zero mode with $`f^R=0`$ and a flat left-handed wave function,

$$f_0^L=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\frac{a^L}{2\pi R}}}.$$
(2.33)
When $`c=0`$, the wave functions for massive modes are444Strictly, there is no uniform convergence as $`ϵ0`$ due to the behaviour around $`y=0`$. We write the limiting functions for $`|y|>\eta `$, with $`\eta `$ an arbitrarily small positive number, keeping in mind that the interactions of the wave functions with the brane are to be calculated before taking the limit $`ϵ0`$.

$`f_n^L=`$ $`B_n[\mathrm{cos}(m_ny)+\mathrm{tan}(m_n\pi R)\mathrm{sin}(m_n|y|)],`$ (2.34)
$`f_n^R=`$ $`C_n[\mathrm{sin}(m_ny)\sigma (y)\mathrm{tan}(m_n\pi R)\mathrm{cos}(m_ny)],`$ (2.35)
with $`\sigma `$ the sign function and masses given by

$$\mathrm{tan}(\pi Rm_n)+\sqrt{\frac{a^L}{a^R}}\mathrm{tan}(\sqrt{a^La^R}\frac{m_n}{2})=0.$$
(2.36)
These solutions reduce to the ones for even scalar fields when $`a^R=0`$. Note also that $`a^R`$ is irrelevant when $`a^L=0`$. The reason is that only when $`a^L`$ forces a discontinuity at the brane is the “odd-odd” $`a^R`$ term nonvanishing for $`ϵ0`$. When $`c>0`$, the solutions reduce again to the ones with $`a^R=0`$, i.e., the only effect of a positive $`c`$ is to cancel the effect of $`a^R`$.
* $`b>0`$. In this case, the wave functions (for $`|y|>\eta >0`$, see previous footnote) and masses reduce to the ones without brane terms: There is a chiral zero mode

$$f_0^L=1,$$
(2.37)
and a tower of massive modes

$`f_n^L=`$ $`B_n\mathrm{cos}(m_ny),`$ (2.38)
$`f_n^R=`$ $`B_n\mathrm{sin}(m_ny),`$ (2.39)
with $`m_n=n/R`$. In all cases, $`f_n(0)=0`$, so that the functions are not piecewise continuous. More precisely,

$$\underset{ϵ0}{lim}dy\delta _ϵ(y)f_{ϵn}^L(y)=0.$$
(2.40)

Again, we see that the solutions change abruptly when $`b`$ or $`c`$ are turned on. Moreover, when $`b>0`$ the wave functions vanish at $`y=0`$, so the fermions do not couple to brane fields.

## 3 Brane kinetic terms in supersymmetric theories

In this section we study the impact of brane kinetic terms in supersymmetric theories. Besides the intrinsic interest of these theories, one might hope that supersymmetry improves the singular behaviour we have observed in the previous section. One more reason to look at supersymmetric models is the following: we have seen that bosons and fermions with brane kinetic terms have different KK wave functions and masses; an intriguing question is then how supersymmetry makes the spectra of bosons and fermions in the same supermultiplet identical.

We consider the supersymmetric quadratic actions of massless 5D hyper and vector multiplets including all possible $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ brane kinetic terms.

### 3.1 Hypermultiplet

Off shell, the 5D hypermultiplet contains two complex scalars, $`\varphi _{1,2}`$, a Dirac fermion $`\psi `$ (with two Weyl components, $`\psi _{1,2}`$), and two complex auxiliary fields, $`F_{1,2}`$. We want to construct an action for these fields, invariant under 5D N=1 supersymmetry in the bulk and under 4D N=1 supersymmetry on the brane. It is easy to write such an action in terms of two 4D N=1 superfields . The Lagrangian is

$$=_{\mathrm{bulk}}+_{\mathrm{brane}},$$
(3.1)
with

$$_{\mathrm{bulk}}=d^4\theta (\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_1+\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_2)+[d^2\theta \mathrm{\Phi }_1_y\mathrm{\Phi }_2+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.],$$
(3.2)
and

$`_{\mathrm{brane}}`$ $`=`$ $`\delta _0\{{\displaystyle }d^4\theta (a_1\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_1+a_2\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_2)`$ (3.3)
$`+[{\displaystyle }d^2\theta (b\mathrm{\Phi }_1_y\mathrm{\Phi }_2c\mathrm{\Phi }_2_y\mathrm{\Phi }_1)+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.]\},`$
where, in the $`y`$ basis, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i=\varphi _i+\sqrt{2}\theta \psi _i+\theta ^2F_i`$. $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ (and their corresponding components) have opposite $`Z_2`$ parities. In this case we have allowed for complex $`b`$ and $`c`$ to keep track of the analytic properties of the supersymmetric theory. In components, the bulk and brane Lagrangians read (summation over $`i`$ is undertood)

$`_{\mathrm{bulk}}=\varphi _i^{}\mathrm{}\varphi _i+i_\mu \overline{\psi }_i\overline{\sigma }^\mu \psi _i+F_i^{}F_i`$
$`+[\varphi _1_yF_2+F_1_y\varphi _2\psi _1_y\psi _2+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.],`$ (3.4)
$`_{\mathrm{brane}}=\delta _0\{a_i[\varphi _i^{}\mathrm{}\varphi _i+i_\mu \overline{\psi }_i\overline{\sigma }^\mu \psi _i+F_i^{}F_i]`$
$`+(b[\varphi _1_yF_2+F_1_y\varphi _2\psi _1_y\psi _2]`$
$`c[\varphi _2_yF_1+F_2_y\varphi _1\psi _2_y\psi _1]+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.)\}.`$ (3.5)
The equations of motion for the auxiliary fields are

$`[1+a_1\delta _0]F_1+[1+b^{}\delta _0]_y\varphi _2^{}+c^{}_y[\delta _0\varphi _2^{}]=0,`$ (3.6)
$`[1+a_2\delta _0]F_2[1+c^{}\delta _0]_y\varphi _1^{}b^{}_y[\delta _0\varphi _1^{}]=0.`$ (3.7)
We can directly solve them, keeping in mind that the delta functions are regularized. Inserting the solutions in the action we find

$`=\{(1+a_1\delta _0)\varphi _1^{}\mathrm{}\varphi _1{\displaystyle \frac{|1+c\delta _0|^2}{1+a_2\delta _0}}_y\varphi _1^{}_y\varphi _1`$
$`[{\displaystyle \frac{b(1+c^{}\delta _0)}{1+a_2\delta _0}}_y\varphi _1^{}_y(\delta _0\varphi _1)+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.]`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{|b|^2}{1+a_2\delta _0}}_y(\delta _0\varphi _1^{})_y(\delta _0\varphi _1)+(12,bc)\}`$
$`+\overline{\psi }_Li\overline{)}\psi _L+\overline{\psi }_Ri\overline{)}\psi _R\overline{\psi }_L_y\psi _R+\overline{\psi }_R_y\psi _L`$ (3.8)
$`+\delta _0[a_1\overline{\psi }_Li\overline{)}\psi _L+a_2\overline{\psi }_Ri\overline{)}\psi _R+(b_y\overline{\psi }_R\psi _L+c\overline{\psi }_R_y\psi _L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.)].`$
We have defined the chiral 4-component spinors $`\psi _L^T=(\psi _1\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0})`$, $`\psi _R^T=(0\overline{\psi }_2)`$. The fermionic sector coincides with the one studied in Section 2 (with $`b2b`$, $`c2c`$). That the spectra of $`\varphi _1`$, $`\varphi _2^{}`$ and $`\psi _{L,R}`$ are identical can be readily seen from the equations of motion for the KK wave functions. The equation for $`\varphi _1`$ is

$`[|1+(b+c)\delta _0|^2_y^2+[(1+(b^{}+c^{})\delta _0)(2b+c)+(1+(b+c)\delta _0)c^{}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{a_2|1+(b+c)\delta _0|^2}{1+a_2\delta _0}}]\delta _0^{}_y+b(1+(b^{}+c^{})\delta _0)(\delta _0^{\prime \prime }{\displaystyle \frac{a_2(\delta _0^{})^2}{1+a_2\delta _0}})+bc^{}(\delta _0^{})^2]f_n^1`$
$`=m_n^2(1+a_1\delta _0)(1+a_2\delta _0)f_n^1,`$ (3.9)
and the one for $`\varphi _2^{}`$ can be obtained from this one by $`12`$ and $`bc^{}`$. For the fermions,

$`\left\{\left[1+(b^{}+c^{})\delta _0\right]_y+c^{}\delta _0^{}\right\}f_n^R=m_n(1+a_1\delta _0)f_n^L,`$ (3.10)
$`\left\{\left[1+(b+c)\delta _0\right]_y+b\delta _0^{}\right\}f_n^L=m_n(1+a_2\delta _0)f_n^R.`$ (3.11)
It is then trivial to show that iterating the fermionic equations we obtain the scalar ones and thus the spectra of fields in the same 4D N=1 supermultiplet are exactly the same, as implied by supersymmetry. We see that in order for the scalar solutions to reproduce the fermionic ones, higher order (singular) terms are required in the scalar sector. They are reminiscent of the famous $`\delta (y)^2`$ terms of .

This example illustrates the fact that higher order operators can modify radically the spectrum, although supersymmetry does not prevent the singular behaviour we observed in the last section for the coefficients $`b`$ and $`c`$. Nevertheless, we can consider the theory with $`b=0`$ and $`c=0`$, which behaves smoothly and looks stable under quantum corrections, as these terms are protected by nonrenormalization theorems. Note, however, that higher order D-terms, which can in principle be induced, may reintroduce the singular behaviour.

### 3.2 Vector multiplet

The 5D off-shell vector multiplet consists of a 5D vector $`A_M`$, two Weyl gauginos $`\lambda _{1,2}`$, a real scalar $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, a real auxiliary field $`D`$ and a complex one $`F_\chi `$. Under D=4 N=1 supersymmetry they form a vector supermultiplet, $`V`$, and a chiral one, $`\chi `$ :

$`V=\theta \sigma ^\mu \overline{\theta }A_\mu i\overline{\theta }^2\theta \lambda _1+i\theta ^2\overline{\theta }\overline{\lambda }_1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\overline{\theta }^2\theta ^2D,`$ (3.12)
$`\chi ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(\mathrm{\Sigma }+iA_5)+\sqrt{2}i\theta \lambda _2+\theta ^2F_\chi ,`$ (3.13)
where $`V`$ is written in the Wess-Zumino gauge and $`\chi `$ in the “$`y`$” basis. Since we are interested in the free action we consider an Abelian theory. The gauge transformations are

$`VV+\mathrm{\Lambda }+\mathrm{\Lambda }^{},`$ (3.14)
$`\chi \chi +\sqrt{2}_y\mathrm{\Lambda },`$ (3.15)
with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ a chiral superfield. The gauge invariant Lagrangian including $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ arbitrary brane terms is $`=_{\mathrm{bulk}}+_{\mathrm{brane}}`$ with

$$_{\mathrm{bulk}}=\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{d}^2\theta W^\alpha W_\alpha +\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.+\mathrm{d}^4\theta \left(_yV\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\chi +\chi ^{})\right)^2,$$
(3.16)
and

$$_{\mathrm{brane}}=\delta _0[\frac{1}{4}a\mathrm{d}^2\theta W^\alpha W_\alpha +\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.+c\mathrm{d}^4\theta (_yV\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\chi +\chi ^{}))^2].$$
(3.17)
The corresponding action is 5D N=1 supersymmetric in the bulk and 4D N=1 supersymmetric on the brane. $`V`$ and $`\chi `$ have opposite $`Z_2`$ parity. In components the Lagrangian reads

$`_{\mathrm{bulk}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F^{MN}F_{MN}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}^\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}D^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_yD+F_\chi F_\chi ^{}`$ (3.18)
$`\lambda _1i\sigma ^\mu _\mu \overline{\lambda }_1\lambda _2i\sigma ^\mu _\mu \overline{\lambda }_2+\lambda _2_y\lambda _1+\overline{\lambda }_2_y\overline{\lambda }_1,`$
$`_{\mathrm{brane}}`$ $`=`$ $`\delta _0[{\displaystyle \frac{a}{4}}F^{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}F^{\mu 5}F_{\mu 5}+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}^\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }+{\displaystyle \frac{a}{2}}D^2c\mathrm{\Sigma }_yD+cF_\chi F_\chi ^{}`$ (3.19)
$`a\lambda _1i\sigma ^\mu _\mu \overline{\lambda }_1c\lambda _2i\sigma ^\mu _\mu \overline{\lambda }_2+c\lambda _2_y\lambda _1+c\overline{\lambda }_2_y\overline{\lambda }_1].`$
Using the equations of motion for the auxiliary fields, $`F_\chi =0`$ and $`(1+a\delta _0)D=_y[(1+c\delta _0)\mathrm{\Sigma }]`$, we find the following Lagrangian for the dynamical fields:

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(1+a\delta _0)F^{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1+c\delta _0)F^{\mu 5}F_{\mu 5}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1+c\delta _0)^\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }_\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+a\delta _0}}_y[(1+c\delta _0)\mathrm{\Sigma }]_y[(1+c\delta _0)\mathrm{\Sigma }]`$
$`+(1+a\delta _0)\overline{\lambda }_Li\overline{)}\lambda _L+(1+c\delta _0)\overline{\lambda }_Ri\overline{)}\lambda _R+(1+c\delta _0)(\overline{\lambda }_R_y\lambda _L+_y\overline{\lambda }_L\lambda _R),`$
where we have defined the chiral 4-component spinors $`\lambda _L^T=(\lambda _1,0)`$ and $`\lambda _R^T=(0,\overline{\lambda }_2)`$.

Again, the equations of motion for bosons and fermions in the same 4D supermultiplet are identical, which leads to the expected degeneracy of the spectra. Indeed, the relevant differential equations are

$$_y\left[(1+c\delta _0)_y\right]f_n^A=m_n^2(1+a\delta _0)f_n^A,$$
(3.21)
for the gauge boson,

$$_y^2\left[(1+c\delta _0)f_n^S\right]=\frac{a\delta _0^{}}{1+a\delta _0}_y\left[(1+c\delta _0)f_n^S\right]m_n^2(1+a\delta _0)f_n^S,$$
(3.22)
for the scalar, and

$`_yf_n^L=m_nf_n^R,`$ (3.23)
$`_y\left[(1+c\delta _0)f_n^R\right]=m_n(1+a\delta _0)f_n^L,`$ (3.24)
for the fermions. If we now iterate the first order fermionic differential equations we find that they are identical to the ones of their bosonic counterparts.

Using the results in the previous section we observe that the KK masses of all the fields are the same as the ones for gauge bosons. In particular, they do not exhibit a $`b`$-like behaviour555For even $`\lambda _R`$ this is so in the fermionic sector because supersymmetry fixes $`a^R=c`$.. This can be understood as the combination of gauge invariance, N=1 supersymmetry relations and the fact that both chiralities combine to produce 4D Dirac masses. On the other hand, there is no finite solution when $`c<0`$, and the wave functions of even $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`\lambda _R`$ are forced to vanish at $`y=0`$ when $`c>0`$.

To summarize this section, supersymmetry improves the behaviour of the KK masses and wave functions, but it does not cure it.

## 4 Singular solutions, the thin brane limit and perturbation theory

We have seen that the brane operators which contain derivatives with respect to $`y`$ give rise to solutions behaving in a quite singular way. In this section we study in greater detail a simple example which exhibits the essential features of the general cases studied above.

Consider the following free Lagrangian of a 5D massless fermion:

$``$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }_Li\overline{)}\psi _L+\overline{\psi }_Ri\overline{)}\psi _R\overline{\psi }_L_y\psi _R+\overline{\psi }_R_y\psi _L`$ (4.1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0[\overline{\psi }_L_y\psi _R+(_y\overline{\psi }_R)\psi _L].`$
We take $`\psi _L`$ even and $`\psi _R`$ odd. The coefficient of the brane term, $`b`$, is naturally of order $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Once more, we assume that the delta function is regularized. The equations of motion can then be derived in the usual way. They read

$`\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0\right)_y\psi _R=i\overline{)}\psi _L,`$ (4.2)
$`\left[\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0\right)_y+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0^{}\right]\psi _L=i\overline{)}\psi _R.`$ (4.3)
These equations admit a zero mode solution: $`\psi _{L,R}(x,y)=f^{L,R}(y)\xi _{L,R}(x)`$, with $`\overline{)}\xi _{L,R}=0`$. This solution is chiral since the boundary conditions for the odd component, $`\psi _R(0)=\psi _R(\pi R)=0`$, together with (4.2) with a vanishing rhs, imply that $`f^R=0`$ everywhere. This leaves a homogeneous first order equation for $`f^L`$ with no further constraint. Using the following representation of the delta function,

$$\delta (y)=\frac{ϵ}{\pi (y^2+ϵ^2)},$$
(4.4)
we readily find

$`f^L`$ $`=`$ $`N{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+\frac{b}{2}\delta _0}}`$ (4.5)
$`=`$ $`2N\pi {\displaystyle \frac{y^2+ϵ^2}{bϵ+2\pi (y^2+ϵ^2)}}`$ (4.6)
with $`N`$ a normalization constant. The first equation, (4.5), holds for any regularization of the delta function. Observe that when $`b<0`$ and $`ϵ|b|/2\pi `$ in (4.6), the function is singular at the points $`y=\pm \sqrt{ϵ(b/2+\pi ϵ)/\pi }`$; moreover, its integral is divergent. Therefore we have to restrict $`b`$ to nonnegative values. The limit $`ϵ0`$ then depends only on whether $`b=0`$ or $`b>0`$. When $`b`$ vanishes the limit of (4.5) is simply $`f^L(y)=N`$. For $`b>0`$, $`f^L`$ approaches $`N`$ everywhere except around $`y=0`$, where it goes to zero in such a way that $`dy\delta (y)f^L(y)0`$. Therefore, for positive $`b`$ the zero mode of the fermion does not couple to fields living on the brane. Moreover, it is insensitive to other possible brane terms and to the precise (positive) value of $`b`$ itself.

Obviously, in the thin brane limit, the zero mode is not smooth in the coefficient $`b`$: the solution for a small positive value of $`b`$ differs drastically (around the brane) from the one for vanishing $`b`$, and there is no finite solution for any negative $`b`$. On the other hand, for a thick brane with $`ϵ>|b|/2\pi `$, the zero mode is well defined and smooth in $`b`$.

This behaviour also shows up in the limit of the perturbative expansion in $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ of the finite $`ϵ`$ result (4.5):

$$f^L=N\left[1+\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left(\frac{1}{2}\right)^n\delta _0^nb^n\right].$$
(4.7)
We see that the breaking of perturbation theory is caused by the functions $`\delta _0^n`$, $`n>1`$, which are singular when $`ϵ0`$. Strictly, the expansion (4.7) is only valid for small $`|b|/ϵ`$, and therefore it is incompatible with the limit $`ϵ0`$. However, the situation is analogous to the one in standard (renormalizable or nonrenormalizable) quantum field theories, where the quantum UV divergences make the loop expansion badly defined. Nevertheless, in these theories it is well known that one can work order by order after renormalization: each order is finite and (at weak coupling) smaller than the lower ones. Since our classical divergences have essentially the same origin as the usual quantum ones (the unknown UV of the theory), it is natural to apply the same renormalization procedure to obtain well defined, finite predictions at each order in perturbation theory. We develop this point of view in the next section.

## 5 Renormalization and critical theories

The divergences we have encountered in perturbation theory are actually a common feature of field theories with infinitely thin defects. They appear, for example, in classical electrodynamics with point sources. These singularities indicate a breakdown of the effective theory at scales in which the details of the fundamental theory—for instance, in our case, a finite thickness of the brane or stringy effects—cannot be neglected. In this sense, they are analogous to the usual UV divergences in radiative corrections. In , Goldberger and Wise have shown how to deal with classical divergences in brane theories of codimension greater than one by the usual renormalization procedure of quantum field theory. The same idea can be applied to brane theories of codimension one with more singular operators: adding appropriate counterterms it is possible to cancel the $`\delta (0)`$ singularities order by order. Let us see how this can be achieved to $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$ in the example of the previous section. In this simple case it is sufficient to add to the Lagrangian the following counterterms:

$$_{\mathrm{ct}}\frac{b^2}{4}\delta _0^2\overline{\psi }_L\mathrm{i}\overline{)}\psi _L\frac{b^2}{4}\delta _0^2(\overline{\psi }_L_y\psi _R+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.).$$
(5.1)
Then, it is straigthforward to check that, to second order, the zero mode solution is well defined:

$$f^L=N\left(1\frac{b}{2}\delta _0+𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^3)\right),$$
(5.2)
and the kinetic term in the action is finite:

$$_{\pi R}^{\pi R}dy(1\frac{b^2}{4}\delta _0^2)(f^L)^2=N^2\left(2\pi Rb+𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^3)\right).$$
(5.3)
This example is quite trivial, but it illustrates the main properties of the counterterms:

1. They are operators of higher dimension. This is related to the fact that the brane coefficients are dimensionful and the theory is nonrenormalizable.
2. The divergences are not pure numbers, but functions of $`y`$ localized at the branes, i.e., functions like $`\delta _0^2`$. Notice that also one loop corrections in an orbifold without brane terms require the introduction of counterterms in a nontrivial background: the delta functions at the fixed points.
3. The coefficients of these singular operators are determined (in a given regularization) by the requirement that the divergences must be cancelled. This is analogous to the fact that the infinite parts of usual counterterms are fixed by the structure of the radiative corrections. However, in our case there is no freedom to adjust at will the finite part of the coefficients, as the operator itself is “infinite”. This has a very important consequence:
4. The coefficients of the higher dimensional operators with more than one delta are not independent parameters of the effective theory. They do not require new observables to be fixed by experiment.

Of course, a full calculation at a given order will include not only the classical part we have considered so far, but also loop diagrams and, possibly, contributions from higher order operators in the effective action. All these contributions may include new thin brane singularities, which should be cancelled. This can be achieved adjusting the coefficients of the counterterms accordingly. In particular, they will contain quantum infinities. In this way, the usual quantum divergences and the thin brane singularities are subtracted all at once.

It should be noted that the renormalization procedure we propose is not identical to the one in , where the classical divergences are just numbers which can be absorbed into the bare first order couplings. In fact, the 5D theories we are analising differ from the 6D model in  in at least two important aspects. First, we find power-law, instead of logarithmic divergences. Second, we are dealing with operators with a richer structure, due to the inclusion of derivatives orthogonal to the branes. This seems to require in the counterterms nontrivial backgrounds with more than one delta function.

We would also like to comment on the similarities and differences of our approach to the one in . There, the singularities in 5D theories with brane operators, like the ones we are discussing, were analised in perturbation theory. The authors proposed to substitute the singular brane terms by terms without $`y`$ derivatives, giving the same solutions to the equations of motion outside the core of the brane. The resulting action was interpreted as a renormalized action. However, we observe that this “massage” (we follow the terminology of ) by itself does not lead to finite solutions since in the original action the divergences near the branes induce divergences also for the solutions far from the branes, and even for observables such as KK masses. In the “massaged” theory this divergent behaviour comes from explicit divergences in the coefficients of the nonsingular operators, which translate into divergencies in the boundary conditions just outside the core of the branes. On the other hand, subtracting the explicit divergences in the mentioned coefficients leads to really finite results. This can be achieved by adding counterterms such as the ones in (5.1), which has the additional advantage that the behaviour inside the brane is also well defined. We should remark that, in their application of “massaging” to the study of the stability of the compact Randall-Sundrum model, the authors of  considered arbitrary finite coefficients of operators without $`y`$ derivatives. Hence, they did use a renormalized theory.

In Appendix B we work out the renormalization of a more involved example: the propagator of a scalar field in the presence of a “$`b`$” brane term. A more complete study of renormalization of theories with brane terms will be presented elsewhere.

This renormalization process can be interpreted in a complementary way. We have seen that, in general, theories with brane kinetic terms have a singular behaviour in the thin brane limit (before renormalization), such that perturbation theory is spoiled. However, there is a subclass of “critical” theories which are well behaved and predictive: the ones with a tower of operators identical to the counterterms introduced above (plus all the operators present initially). The coefficients of these operators are not independent parameters: both their finite part and the part depending on the quantum renormalization scale are functions of the coefficients of bulk operators and brane operators with only one delta. In this sense, these critical effective theories correspond to a particular reduction of couplings . In fact, such relations should exist in the low energy effective theory if the fundamental theory is to be well behaved for infinitely thin branes. For instance, in  it was hoped that M-theory would directly give well defined quantities without the $`\delta (0)`$ that were observed in the supergravity description of the Hořava-Witten model.666It might be objected that supersymmetric theories cannot be critical—or, equivalently, renormalization breaks supersymmetry—since in our discussion above supersymmetry determined completely the higher order operators of the on-shell theory, and we have seen that they do not eradicate the singular behaviour. This is actually not so, since we included only first order operators in the off-shell action. Higher order off-shell operators compatible with supersymmetry can give rise to a critical theory. Of course, the on-shell supersymmetry transformations will be different from the ones without the new operators. A particularly simple example of critical theory (at least at the classical level), in which all the coefficients of operators of order higher than one vanish, is the one for a gauge boson with $`c=0`$. Indeed, in this case one can directly perform the KK reduction to all orders in $`a`$, as done in  and in Section 2.

## 6 Conclusions

We have studied 5D theories for spins $`1`$ with general brane kinetic terms. We have shown that some terms which had been neglected in the past play an active role, especially in the case of fermions. We have first calculated the KK masses and wave functions in these theories to all orders in the coefficients of the brane terms, using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. We have found that some terms change smoothly the solutions without brane terms, while others—the ones with derivatives with respect to $`y`$—change them abruptly, destroying the perturbative hierarchy of the effective theory. We have also built supersymmetric free actions with brane terms for the hyper and vector multiplets and studied their KK decompositions. Supersymmetry does not solve in general the difficulties produced by the second kind of operators, although it can alleviate them in some cases. We have then discussed in detail a particular case, showing that the singular behaviour is caused by the presence of infinitely thin branes. If we insist on performing perturbative calculations, we have to face $`\delta (0)`$-like divergences at $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$ and higher orders. At this point, at least three different paths can be followed.

First, we can simply take the exact results at their faith value and accept a theory with such behaviour. From a phenomenological point of view, the possible realistic models would be constrained by the decoupling of the wave functions from the branes and, in the nonsupersymmetric scenario, the absence of scalar zero modes. In particular, bulk fermions would not couple to a boundary Higgs, while a nonsupersymmetric bulk Higgs would not have the required zero mode. Even more problematic is the fact that perturbation theory breaks down. It seems very difficult, if not impossible, to construct a predictive interacting field theory in extra dimensions without some hierarchy controlling the size of the operators.

Second, we can work with thick branes instead of zero width branes (see  for recent calculations with kinetic terms on thick branes). This is natural if the brane is a domain wall. The disadvantage of this approach is that the results depend on the substructure of the brane and are thus very model dependent. Furthermore, we would like to be able to define sensible field theories in orbifold compatifications with vanishing brane width.

Third, we can renormalize the theory to render it free from both classical and quantum divergences in perturbation theory. This is equivalent to working with a “critical” theory containing a tower of operators whose coefficients satisfy certain relations. Here we have just argued that this is a sensible approach to construct extra dimensional models with thin branes. We have not described the renormalization program in detail nor proven that it can be carried out to all orders. This subject is under investigation.

Including mass terms in the bulk and on the branes may be relevant for phenomenology, but it does not alter in an essential way the results given here. The same holds for brane kinetic branes on the second brane. Finally, in a complete model one should also take into account brane interactions, which may require the introduction of new counterterms.

## Acknowledgements

We thank Ferruccio Feruglio, Luca Girlanda, Ignacio Navarro, Toni Riotto and Verónica Sanz for discussions. This work has been supported in part by MCYT under contract FPA2000-1558, by Junta de Andalucía group FQM 101, by the European Community’s Human Potential Programme under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00149 Physics at Colliders, and by PPARC.

## Appendix A First order solutions

In this appendix we present the KK expansions to first order in $`1/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. The first order results are directly finite, but they are only meaningful when the theory is renormalized, so that higher orders are also finite. Perturbatively, the solutions to the generalized eigenvalue problem can be computed in different ways. If the full analytic solutions are known for a smooth regularization of the brane, we can expand them in powers of the dimensionful coefficients $`a,b,c`$ and then take the limit $`ϵ0`$. Alternatively, we can perform the perturbative expansion from the very beginning in the eigenvalue equations and normalization conditions and solve them order by order (again for a finite $`ϵ`$ and taking the limit of thin brane only at the end of the calculation).

We find that the first order KK masses are invariant under $`ab`$ for scalars and under $`a^Lb`$ and $`a^Rc`$ for fermions, while the wave functions are invariant up to possible delta functions. This can be understood in the following way. In the scalar sector, one can perform the field redefinition

$$\varphi (1\frac{b}{2}\delta _0)\varphi ,$$
(A.1)
which to first order only has the effect of redefining the coefficients $`b0`$ and $`aab`$. In the fermion sector, the field redefinitions

$`\psi _L`$ $``$ $`(1{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\delta _0)\psi _L,`$ (A.2)
$`\psi _R`$ $``$ $`(1{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}\delta _0)\psi _R,`$ (A.3)
redefine $`b0`$, $`a^La^Lb`$ and $`c0`$, $`a^Ra^Rc`$. All these field redefinitions generate higher order operators as well. These are responsible for the singularities observed at higher orders.

### Scalars and Gauge Bosons

Consider an even scalar with general values of $`a,b,c`$ (gauge bosons satisfy the same equations with the condition $`b=0`$). The solution to first order is, for the zero mode,

$$f_0(y)=1+\frac{ba}{4\pi R}\frac{b}{2}\delta _0,$$
(A.4)
and for the massive modes,

$`f_n(y)=`$ $`\sqrt{2}\mathrm{cos}(m_n^{(0)}y){\displaystyle \frac{b}{\sqrt{2}}}\delta _0`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{ba}{2\pi R}}\left[\mathrm{cos}(m_n^{(0)}y)+2m_n^{(0)}(\pi R|y|)\mathrm{sin}(m_n^{(0)}|y|)\right],`$ (A.5)
with $`m_n^{(0)}=n/R`$, and masses

$$m_n=\frac{n}{R}\left(1+\frac{ba}{2\pi R}\right).$$
(A.6)
Note that the “odd-odd” parameter $`c`$ has no effect to this order.

For an odd scalar there is no zero mode and the massive ones are

$`f_n(y)=`$ $`\sqrt{2}\mathrm{sin}(m_n^{(0)}y)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2\pi R}}\left[\mathrm{sin}(m_n^{(0)}y)2m_n^{(0)}\sigma (y)(\pi R|y|)\mathrm{cos}(m_n^{(0)}y)\right],`$ (A.7)
with $`\sigma (y)`$ the sign function and masses

$$m_n=\frac{n}{R}\left(1+\frac{c}{2\pi R}\right).$$
(A.8)
The “odd-odd” parameters, which are now $`a`$ and $`b`$ do not contribute to this order while the “even-even” parameter $`c`$ has a non-trivial effect, in contrast with the results in Section 2.

### Fermions

For the even component (which we take here to be the LH component), this case is identical to the scalar case except for the term with $`a^R`$, which, just like $`c`$, does not contribute to first order. The wave functions and masses to $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ are

$$f_0^L(y)=1+\frac{ba^L}{4\pi R}\frac{b}{2}\delta _0,$$
(A.9)
for the zero mode (with no zero mode for the odd chirality), and

$`f_n^L(y)=`$ $`\sqrt{2}\mathrm{cos}(m_n^{(0)}y){\displaystyle \frac{b}{\sqrt{2}}}\delta _0`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{ba^L}{2\pi R}}\left[\mathrm{cos}(m_n^{(0)}y)+2m_n^{(0)}(\pi R|y|)\mathrm{sin}(m_n^{(0)}|y|)\right],`$ (A.10)
$`f_n^R(y)=`$ $`\sqrt{2}\mathrm{sin}(m_n^{(0)}y)`$ (A.11)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \frac{ba^L}{2\pi R}}\left[\mathrm{sin}(m_n^{(0)}y)2m_n^{(0)}\sigma (y)(\pi R|y|)\mathrm{cos}(m_n^{(0)}y)\right],`$ (A.12)
$`m_n=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{n}{R}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{ba^L}{2\pi R}}\right),`$ (A.13)
for the massive modes.

## Appendix B Renormalization of the scalar propagator

Here we give another example of classical renormalization. We consider the scalar theory (2.1) with $`a=c=0`$ for an even scalar, and calculate perturbatively the classical propagator to $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$, i.e., $`𝒪(b^2)`$. We work in momentum space for the first four coordinates and in position space for the 5th coordinate. The brane delta functions are, as usual, assumed to be regularized and this time we indicate this explicitly through a subindex $`ϵ`$, to differentiate these deltas from the ones which do not need regularization. In perturbation theory, the propagator can be written

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(p;y_1,y_2)=\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)+\mathrm{\Delta }_1(p;y_1,y_2)+\mathrm{\Delta }_2(p;y_1,y_2)+𝒪(b^3),$$
(B.1)
with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_n`$ proportional to $`b^n`$. The zeroth order propagator satisfies the equation

$$[_{y_1}^2+p^2]\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)=\frac{1}{2}\left[\delta (y_1y_2)+\delta (y_1+y_2)\right],$$
(B.2)
with boundary conditions

$`\left[_{y_1}\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)\right]_{y_1=0^+}=0,y_2\overline{)}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0},`$ (B.3)
$`\left[_{y_1}\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)\right]_{y_1=\pi R^{}}=0,y_2\overline{)}=\pi R.`$ (B.4)
The solution is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)=\frac{\mathrm{cos}(py_<)\mathrm{cos}(p(\pi Ry_>))}{2p\mathrm{sin}(p\pi R)},$$
(B.5)
with $`y_<=\text{Min}\{|y_1|,|y_2|\}`$, $`y_>=\text{Max}\{|y_1|,|y_2|\}`$. The first order propagator is given by the zeroth order propagator with one insertion of the brane kinetic term. It reads

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_1(p;y_1,y_2)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}z\delta _ϵ(z)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,z)(\stackrel{}{_z^2}+_z^2)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;z,y_2)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}[2p^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,0)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;0,y_2)\delta (y_1)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)\delta (y_2)].`$ (B.6)
In the second line we have used (B.2) and taken the limit $`ϵ0`$, which is well defined. The singularities arise at the next order. The second order propagator has two insertions of the brane kinetic term:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_2(p;y_1,y_2)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{b^2}{4}}{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}z_1\mathrm{d}z_2\delta _ϵ(z_1)\delta _ϵ(z_2)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,z_1)(\stackrel{}{_{z_1}^2}+_{z_1}^2)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;z_1,z_2)`$
$`\times (\stackrel{}{_{z_2}^2}+_{z_2}^2)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;z_2,y_2).`$ (B.7)
Using (B.2) for the internal propagator and integrating on $`z_2`$, we find a contribution

$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }_2(p;y_1,y_2)\right]_{\mathrm{div}}=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{b^2}{4}}{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}z_1\{p^2\delta _ϵ^2(z_1)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,z_1)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;z_1,y_2)`$
$`+_{z_1}\left[\delta _ϵ(z_1)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,z_1)\right]_{z_1}\left[\delta _ϵ(z_1)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;z_1,y_2)\right]`$
$`\delta _ϵ^2(z_1)\left[\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,z_1)(\stackrel{}{_{z_1}^2}+_{z_1}^2)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;z_1,y_2)\right]\},`$ (B.8)
which diverges when $`ϵ0`$. To renormalize the theory to second order (at the classical level) we add the following counterterms to the Lagrangian:

$$_{\mathrm{ct}}=\frac{b^2}{4}\left\{\delta _ϵ^2(y)_\mu \varphi ^{}^\mu \varphi _y\left[\delta _ϵ(y)\varphi ^{}\right]_y\left[\delta _ϵ(y)\varphi \right]+\delta _ϵ^2(y)\left(\varphi ^{}_y^2\varphi +_y^2\varphi ^{}\varphi \right)\right\}.$$
(B.9)
Then, the divergences are cancelled and taking $`ϵ0`$ we find the finite result

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_2^{\mathrm{ren}}(p;y_1,y_2)=\frac{b^2}{4}\left[2p^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,0)+\delta (y_1)\right]\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;0,0)\left[2p^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;0,y_2)+\delta (y_2)\right].$$
(B.10)
We have checked that the counterterms (B.9) also render the KK reduction finite to order $`𝒪(1/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2)`$. The explicit delta functions in the propagator can be translated through a field redefinition into brane interaction terms. For points $`y_1`$ and $`y_2`$ away from the first brane, the renormalized classical propagator reads

$`\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{ren}}(p;y_1,y_2)=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,y_2)bp^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,0)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;0,y_2)`$
$`+b^2p^4\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;y_1,0)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;0,0)\mathrm{\Delta }_0(p;0,y_2)+𝒪(b^3)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\left[\mathrm{cos}(py_<)+\frac{b}{2}p\mathrm{sin}(py_<)\right]\mathrm{cos}\left(p(\pi Ry_>)\right)}{2p\left[\mathrm{sin}(p\pi R)\frac{b}{2}p\mathrm{cos}(p\pi R)\right]}}+𝒪(b^3).`$ (B.11)
Actually, working out the renormalization to all orders and resumming the series, it can be shown that the exact renormalized propagator is equal to the explicit expression in the last line of (B.11) . The KK masses and wave functions can be easily obtained from (B.11): they are the poles and the square roots of the residua of the propagator. They agree with the ones for an even scalar when $`b=c=0`$ and $`a=b`$. In fact, the explicit expression in (B.11) is identical to the exact propagator of the theory with $`b=c=0`$ and $`a=b`$. As we have observed in Appendix A, the field redefinition (A.1) eliminates the $`b`$ operator from the action (2.1) and redefines $`aab`$. It also introduces new operators at higher orders, which give rise to singularities. The result in (B.11) shows that performing the field redefinition (A.1) in the action with the counterterms (B.9), the second order terms cancel out (at least when $`a=c=0`$ initially). Conversely, performing the field redefinition and neglecting the higher order operators which are generated amounts to a renormalization of the theory. The delta functions in (A.1) account for the ones in $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{\mathrm{ren}}`$.