Spectrally cut-off GFF, regularized $Φ^4$ measure, and reflection positivity

Ismael Bailleul, Nguyen Viet Dang, Léonard Ferdinand, Gaëtan Leclerc, Jiasheng Lin
December 24, 2023
We argue that the spectrally cut-off Gaussian free field $\Phi_\Lambda$ on a compact Riemannian manifold or on $\mathbb{R}^n$ cannot satisfy the spatial Markov property. Moreover, when the manifold is reflection positive, we show that $\Phi_\Lambda$ fails to be reflection positive. We explain the difficulties one encounters when trying to deduce the reflection positivity property of the measure exp$(-\|\rho\Phi_\Lambda\|_{L^4}^4) \mu_{\text{GFF}}(d\Phi)$ from the reflection positivity property of the Gaussian free field measure $\mu_{\text{GFF}}$ in a naive way. These issues are probably well-known to experts of constructive quantum field theory but to our knowledge, no detailed account can be found in the litterature. Our pedagogical note aims to fill this small gap.

Keywords: 
General local covariance, constructive quantum field theory, free field theory