2025/09/24 by Guillermo Arias-Tamargo, C.M. Hull, Arias-Tamargo, Guillermo +3
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Molecular spectroscopy and chirality #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.20441
openalex publication_date 2025/09/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the role of categorical symmetries in constraining the renormalisation of couplings in two-dimensional non-linear sigma models with Wess-Zumino term. A large class of these theories admit self-duality symmetries associated with discrete gauging and T-duality. They are generically non-conformal, but we argue that a particular coupling is protected from quantum corrections by the categorical symmetry. We give strong evidence for this claim by showing that the β-function for this coupling vanishes to 2-loop order if and only if this symmetry is present. Furthermore, in cases where the target space is a group manifold, the non-renormalisation result can be proven to hold non-perturbatively.