Fermionic unparticles, gauge interactions and the β function

Abstract

The dynamics of fermionic unparticles is developed from first principles. It is shown that any unparticle, whether fermionic or bosonic, can be recast in terms of a canonically quantized field, but with non-local interaction terms. We further develop a possible gauge theory for fermionic unparticles. Computing the consequent contribution of unfermions to the β function of the theory, it is shown that this can be viewed as the sum of two contributions, one fermion-like and the other scalar-like. However, if full conformal invariance is imposed, the latter vanishes identically. We discuss the consequences thereof as well as some general phenomenological issues.