- Open Access
Testing scalar field self-dualities in using a variational method
Phys. Rev. D 114, 014521 – Published 27 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/25zd-4r9z
Abstract
Recently, self-dualities based on saddle-point expansions have been proposed as a means to obtain qualitative nonperturbative information in scalar field theories. In this work, we test this proposition quantitatively by studying the phase transition for critical scalar field theory in dimensions using a variational method. We find that saddle-point methods obtain quantitative agreement for the free energy, but differ on the order of 25% for the peak location of the correlation length.
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