Renormalization Group and Decoupling in Curved Space: III. The Case of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

Abstract

We continue investigation of the renormalization group and decoupling of the quantized massive fields in curved space. In the present work we analyze a theory, where fields gain their masses due to the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB), that is the case providing a remarkable exception from the Appelquist-Carazzone theorem in the matter fields sector. In the vacuum sector, already at the classical level, the theory with SSB includes, in the general case an infinite number of the non-local terms in the induced vacuum action. Despite this surprising property, we show that the theory is renormalizable and moreover the low-energy decoupling in the higher-derivative gravitational sector performs similar to the AC theorem.