Past exam of the theoretical physics major option course of the University of Oxford / 2022 / 6 / a / Solution

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 $\varphi \mapsto -\varphi$ is a symmetry precisely when every nonzero odd-power coupling vanishes. The free massless special case also admits a constant shift of $\varphi$; generic interactions remove it.

In mass units, $[{\partial }_{\mu }]=1$ and the dimensionless action requires $[\mathcal{L}]=D$. Normalizing the kinetic term fixes the classical mass dimension of the scalar field:For each interaction, $[{\lambda }_n]+n[\varphi ]=D$, 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 $D=4$.