Automatic Fine-Tuning in the 2-Flavor Schwinger Model

Abstract

I discuss the 2-flavor Schwinger model both without and with fermion masses. I argue that the concept of "conformal coalescence," in unparticle physics in which linear combinations of short distance operators can disappear from the long-distance theory, makes it easy to understand some puzzling features of the model with small fermion masses. In particular, I argue that for an average fermion mass $m_f$ and a mass difference $\delta m$, so long as both are small compared to the dynamical gauge boson mass $m=e\sqrt{2/\pi}$, isospin breaking effects in the low energy theory are exponentially suppressed by powers of $\exp\Bigl(-(m/m_f)^{2/3}\Bigr)$ even if $\delta m\approx m_f$! In the low energy theory, this looks like exponential fine-tuning, but it is done automatically by conformal coalescence.