225 citations · 1.8k across the 31 of their papers we have counts for
32 papers
Positivity and the Electroweak Hierarchy
Joe Davighi, Scott Melville, Ken Mimasu +1
We point out that an unnatural hierarchy between certain higher-dimensional operator coefficients in a low-energy Effective Field Theory (EFT) would automatically imply that the Hi…
The Cosmological Tree Theorem
Santiago Agui-Salcedo, Scott Melville
A number of diagrammatic "cutting rules" have recently been developed for the wavefunction of the Universe which determines cosmological correlation functions. These leverage pertu…
Orbital Precession and Hidden Symmetries in Scalar-Tensor Theories
Anne-Christine Davis, Scott Melville
We revisit the connection between relativistic orbital precession, the Laplace-Runge-Lenz symmetry, and the -channel discontinuity of scattering amplitudes. Applying this to sca…
The Analytic Wavefunction
Santiago Agui Salcedo, Mang Hei Gordon Lee, Scott Melville +1
The wavefunction in quantum field theory is an invaluable tool for tackling a variety of problems, including probing the interior of Minkowski spacetime and modelling boundary obse…
Positivity bounds from multiple vacua and their cosmological consequences
Scott Melville, Johannes Noller
Positivity bounds - constraints on any low-energy effective field theory imposed by the fundamental axioms of unitarity, causality and locality in the UV - have recently been used…
Natural Selection Rules: New Positivity Bounds for Massive Spinning Particles
Joe Davighi, Scott Melville, Tevong You
We derive new effective field theory (EFT) positivity bounds on the elastic scattering amplitudes of massive spinning particles from the standard UV properties of unitarity…
Spin-orbit effects for compact binaries in scalar-tensor gravity
Philippe Brax, Anne-Christine Davis, Scott Melville +1
Gravitational waves provide us with a new window into our Universe, and have already been used to place strong constrains on the existence of light scalar fields, which are a commo…
Scalar Fields Near Compact Objects: Resummation versus UV Completion
Anne-Christine Davis, Scott Melville
Low-energy effective field theories containing a light scalar field are used extensively in cosmology, but often there is a tension between embedding such theories in a healthy UV…
Cosmological Cutting Rules
Scott Melville, Enrico Pajer
Primordial perturbations in our universe are believed to have a quantum origin, and can be described by the wavefunction of the universe (or equivalently, cosmological correlators)…
Positivity Bounds on Dark Energy: When Matter Matters
Claudia de Rham, Scott Melville, Johannes Noller
Positivity bounds - constraints on any low-energy effective field theory imposed by the fundamental axioms of unitarity, causality and locality in the UV - have recently been used…
Positivity Bounds without Boosts
Tanguy Grall, Scott Melville
We derive the first positivity bounds for low-energy Effective Field Theories (EFTs) that are not invariant under Lorentz boosts. "Positivity bounds" are the low-energy manifestati…
Spin precession as a new window into disformal scalar fields
Philippe Brax, Anne-Christine Davis, Scott Melville +1
We launch a first investigation into how a light scalar field coupled both conformally and disformally to matter influences the evolution of spinning point-like bodies. Working dir…
Quantum Corrections to Generic Branes: DBI, NLSM, and More
Garrett Goon, Scott Melville, Johannes Noller
We study quantum corrections to hypersurfaces of dimension embedded in generic higher-dimensional spacetimes. Manifest covariance is maintained throughout the analysis and…
On the time evolution of cosmological correlators
Sebastian Cespedes, Anne-Christine Davis, Scott Melville
Developing our understanding of how correlations evolve during inflation is crucial if we are to extract information about the early Universe from our late-time observables. To tha…
Solutions to Problems at Les Houches Summer School on EFT
Marcel Balsiger, Marios Bounakis, Mehdi Drissi +10
This work details worked solutions to the various problems set by the lecturers during the course of the Les Houches summer school 2017 on effective field theories in particle phys…
Inflation in Motion: Unitarity Constraints in Effective Field Theories with Broken Lorentz Symmetry
Tanguy Grall, Scott Melville
During inflation, there is a preferred reference frame in which the expansion of the background spacetime is spatially isotropic. In contrast to Minkowski spacetime, observables ca…
UV Constraints on Massive Spinning Particles: Lessons from the Gravitino
Scott Melville, Diederik Roest, David Stefanyszyn
Self-interacting massive particles with spin unavoidably violate unitarity; the question is at what scale. For spin- the strong coupling scale (at which perturbative un…
Novel Screening with Two Bodies: Summing the ladder in disformal scalar-tensor theories
Anne-Christine Davis, Scott Melville
When augmenting our cosmological models or gravitational theories with an additional light scalar field, any coupling between matter and this scalar can affect the orbital motion o…
Positivity in the sky
Scott Melville, Johannes Noller
Positivity bounds - the consequences of requiring a unitary, causal, local UV completion - place strong restrictions on theories of dark energy and/or modified gravity. We derive a…
An Anomaly-free Atlas: charting the space of flavour-dependent gauged extensions of the Standard Model
B. C. Allanach, Joe Davighi, Scott Melville
Spontaneously broken, flavour-dependent, gauged extensions of the Standard Model (SM) have many phenomenological uses. We chart the space of solutions to the gauge anomaly c…
Gravitational Rainbows: LIGO and Dark Energy at its Cutoff
Claudia de Rham, Scott Melville
The recent direct detection of a neutron star merger with optical counterpart has been used to severely constrain models of dark energy that typically predict a modification of the…
Positivity Bounds for Massive Spin-1 and Spin-2 Fields
Claudia de Rham, Scott Melville, Andrew J. Tolley +1
We apply the recently developed positivity bounds for particles with spin, applied away from the forward limit, to the low energy effective theories of massive spin-1 and spin-2 th…
Improved Positivity Bounds and Massive Gravity
Claudia de Rham, Scott Melville, Andrew J. Tolley
Theories such as massive Galileons and massive gravity can satisfy the presently known improved positivity bounds provided they are weakly coupled. We discuss the form of the EFT L…
UV complete me: Positivity Bounds for Particles with Spin
Claudia de Rham, Scott Melville, Andrew J. Tolley +1
For a low energy effective theory to admit a standard local, unitary, analytic and Lorentz-invariant UV completion, its scattering amplitudes must satisfy certain inequalities. Whi…