Renormalisation and invariants for two U(1)s

Abstract

We revisit the renormalisation of models with two U(1) gauge symmetries, in a formulation with non-canonical gauge kinetic terms which is covariant under field reparametrisations among the two gauge bosons. This approach is convenient to study the appearance of kinetic mixing in scale evolution, because a coupling matrix is attributed to the gauge kinetic terms. We obtain simple MSbar renormalisation group equations up to two-loop, which can be solved to give effective millicharges at low energy which depend on the running couplings and heavy mass scales of the model. This formulation allows to construct ``invariants'' out of running Lagrangian parameters, which are invariant under generic gauge field reparametrisations, including rescalings, and which can be related directly to observables such as the millicharge.