Dynamical symmetry breaking of λφ⁴ theory in the two loop effective potential

The two loop effective potential of massless λφ⁴ theory is presented in several regularization and renormalization prescriptions and the dynamical symmetry breaking solution is obtained in the strong-coupling situation in several prescriptions except the Coleman-Weinberg prescription. The beta function in the broken phase becomes negative and the UV fixed point turns out to be a strong-coupling one, and its numeric value varies with the renormalization prescriptions, a detail which is different from the asymptotic-free solution in the one loop case. The symmetry-breaking phase is shown to be an entirely strong-coupling phase. The reason for the relevance of the renormalization prescriptions is shown to be due to the nonperturbative nature of the effective potential. We also reanalyze the two loop effective potential by adopting a differential equation approach based on the understanding that all the quantum field theories are ill-defined formulations of the "low-energy" effective theories of a complete underlying theory. The relevance of the prescriptions of fixing the local ambiguities to physical properties such as symmetry breaking is further emphasized. We also tentatively propose a rescaling insensitivity argument for fixing the quadratic ambiguities. Some detailed properties of the strongly coupled broken phase and related issues are discussed.