2025/09/08 by Liu, Xin-Yi, Xu, Yongjun
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.06630
We present an approach to deriving positivity bounds on effective field theories by analyzing the thermodynamic behavior of thermal quantum field systems. Focusing on scalar theories with higher-dimensional operators, we compute the finite-temperature entropy using thermal field theory techniques. We argue that consistency with fundamental thermodynamic principles--specifically, the expectation that entropy increases with the introduction of new degrees of freedom--imposes nontrivial constraints on Wilson coefficients. In particular, we show that the coefficient of the leading dimension-8 operator must be strictly positive. This thermodynamic perspective offers an alternative to traditional S-matrix-based derivations of positivity bounds and provides a complementary perspective into the interplay between entropy, unitarity, and causality in quantum field theory.