Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-major-option-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/6/a/solution
Past exam of the theoretical physics major option course of the University of Oxford 2022 6 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
The real scalar field action has spacetime translations and Lorentz invariance, together giving Poincaré symmetry. With a real scalar transformation law it also has parity and time reversal. A generic polynomial potential has no continuous internal symmetry. The additional field reversal is a symmetry precisely when every nonzero odd-power coupling vanishes. The free massless special case also admits a constant shift of ; generic interactions remove it.
In mass units, and the dimensionless action requires . Normalizing the kinetic term fixes the classical mass dimension of the scalar field:For each interaction, , soThese are classical or engineering scaling dimensions; quantum corrections can change the scaling of operators and couplings. The scale transformation prescribed later has field weight one, which equals this canonical weight only at .
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