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Critical Phenomena on the Bethe Lattice

We investigate the critical behavior of a family of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetric scalar field theories on the Bethe lattice (the tree limit of regular hyperbolic tessellations) using both the non-perturbative Functional Renormalization Group and lattice perturbation theory. The family is indexed by the parameter $ζ\in (0,1]$, which determines the range of the theory via the kinetic term constructed from the graph Laplacian raised to the power $ζ$. Specifically, $ζ=1$ is the short-range theory, while $0<ζ<1$ defines the long-range model. Due to the hyperbolic nature of Bethe lattices, the Laplacian lacks a zero mode and exhibits a spectral gap. We find that upon closing this spectral gap by a modification of the Laplacian, the scalar field theories exhibit novel critical behavior in the form of non-trivial fixed points with critical exponents governed by $ζ$ and the spectral dimension $d_s=3$. In particular, our analysis indicates the presence of a Wilson-Fisher fixed point for the short range $ζ=1$ theory. In contrast, the nearest-neighbor Ising model on the Bethe lattice is known to exhibit mean-field critical exponents. To the best of our knowledge, this work provides the first evidence that a scalar $ϕ^4$ theory and the discrete Ising model on the same underlying lattice may lie in distinct universality classes.