Correlation Functions and Trace Anomalies in Weakly Relevant Flows

Abstract

We study abstract weakly relevant flows in a general number of dimensions. They arguably provide the simplest example of renormalization group (RG) flows between two non-trivial fixed points. We compute several two-point correlation functions in position space valid along the whole RG flow. This is done by using conformal perturbation theory together with the solution of the Callan-Symanzik equation. From the explicit expressions of the two-point functions of conserved currents and the stress-tensor we extract the change in the central charges between the UV and IR fixed points. This immediately gives us $\Delta c$, the change of the $c-$trace anomaly between the UV and IR fixed points in 4d. We also discuss three-point functions. We couple weakly relevant flows to non-dynamical dilaton and graviton background fields in 4d. We compute the three-dilaton vertex in terms of the scalar two-point function and extract the value of $\Delta a$, the change of the $a$-trace anomaly between the UV and IR fixed points. We also compute the graviton-graviton-dilaton vertex in terms of the three-point function of two stress-tensors and a scalar, and extract the value of $\Delta c$. The $\Delta c$ values obtained with the two different methods agree.