Abstract

In quantum field theory with a mass gap correlation function between two spatially separated operators decays exponentially with the distance. This fundamental result immediately implies an exponential suppression of all higher point correlation functions, but the predicted exponent is not optimal. We argue that in a general quantum field theory the optimal suppression of a three-point function is determined by total distance from the operator locations to the Fermat-Steiner point. Similarly, for the higher point functions we conjecture the optimal exponent is determined by the solution of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem. We discuss how our results constrain operator spreading in relativistic theories.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-19-2019

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Journal of High Energy Physics, v. 2019, issue 4, article 128, p. 1-14.

© The Author(s) 2019

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2019)128

Funding Information

Article funded by SCOAP3.

This work is supported by the BSF grant 2016186. The research at KITP was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1748958.

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