Wiggly dilaton: A landscape of spontaneously broken scale invariance

Sudhakantha Girmohanta; Yuichiro Nakai; Yu-Cheng Qiu; Zhihao Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139534

Wiggly dilaton: A landscape of spontaneously broken scale invariance

Sudhakantha Girmohanta
, Yuichiro Nakai
, Yu-Cheng Qiu^*
, Zhihao Zhang

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

20 Downloads (CityUHK Scholars)

Abstract

The dilaton emerges as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) associated with the spontaneous breaking of scale invariance in a nearly conformal field theory (CFT). We show the existence of a wiggly dilaton potential that contains multiple vacuum solutions in a five-dimensional (5D) holographic formulation. The wiggly feature originates from boundary potentials of a 5D axion-like scalar field, whose naturally small bulk mass parameter corresponds to a marginally-relevant deformation of the dual CFT. Depending on the energy density of a boundary 3-brane, our model can provide a relaxion potential or generate a light dilaton. However, an extremely light dilaton requires fine-tuning. © 2025 The Author(s).

Original language	English
Article number	139534
Journal	Physics Letters B
Volume	866
Online published	8 May 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139534
Publication status	Published - Jul 2025
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

8 pages, 8 figures, the published version

Funding

The work is supported by Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai. The work of Y.-C. Qiu is supported by the K. C. Wong Educational Foundation.

Research Keywords

Dilaton
Radion
pNGB

Publisher's Copyright Statement

This full text is made available under CC-BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139534

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title = "Wiggly dilaton: A landscape of spontaneously broken scale invariance",

abstract = " The dilaton emerges as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) associated with the spontaneous breaking of scale invariance in a nearly conformal field theory (CFT). We show the existence of a wiggly dilaton potential that contains multiple vacuum solutions in a five-dimensional (5D) holographic formulation. The wiggly feature originates from boundary potentials of a 5D axion-like scalar field, whose naturally small bulk mass parameter corresponds to a marginally-relevant deformation of the dual CFT. Depending on the energy density of a boundary 3-brane, our model can provide a relaxion potential or generate a light dilaton. However, an extremely light dilaton requires fine-tuning. {\textcopyright} 2025 The Author(s).",

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author = "Sudhakantha Girmohanta and Yuichiro Nakai and Yu-Cheng Qiu and Zhihao Zhang",

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doi = "10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139534",

language = "English",

volume = "866",

journal = "Physics Letters B",

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T2 - A landscape of spontaneously broken scale invariance

AU - Girmohanta, Sudhakantha

AU - Nakai, Yuichiro

AU - Qiu, Yu-Cheng

AU - Zhang, Zhihao

N1 - 8 pages, 8 figures, the published version

PY - 2025/7

Y1 - 2025/7

N2 - The dilaton emerges as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) associated with the spontaneous breaking of scale invariance in a nearly conformal field theory (CFT). We show the existence of a wiggly dilaton potential that contains multiple vacuum solutions in a five-dimensional (5D) holographic formulation. The wiggly feature originates from boundary potentials of a 5D axion-like scalar field, whose naturally small bulk mass parameter corresponds to a marginally-relevant deformation of the dual CFT. Depending on the energy density of a boundary 3-brane, our model can provide a relaxion potential or generate a light dilaton. However, an extremely light dilaton requires fine-tuning. © 2025 The Author(s).

AB - The dilaton emerges as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) associated with the spontaneous breaking of scale invariance in a nearly conformal field theory (CFT). We show the existence of a wiggly dilaton potential that contains multiple vacuum solutions in a five-dimensional (5D) holographic formulation. The wiggly feature originates from boundary potentials of a 5D axion-like scalar field, whose naturally small bulk mass parameter corresponds to a marginally-relevant deformation of the dual CFT. Depending on the energy density of a boundary 3-brane, our model can provide a relaxion potential or generate a light dilaton. However, an extremely light dilaton requires fine-tuning. © 2025 The Author(s).

KW - Dilaton

KW - Radion

KW - pNGB

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105004708945

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U2 - 10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139534

DO - 10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139534

M3 - RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal

SN - 0370-2693

VL - 866

JO - Physics Letters B

JF - Physics Letters B

M1 - 139534

ER -

Wiggly dilaton: A landscape of spontaneously broken scale invariance

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Research Keywords

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