We study Gibbs measures with log-correlated base Gaussian fields on the d-dimensional torus. In the defocusing case, the construction of such Gibbs measures follows from Nelson’s argument. In this paper, we consider the focusing case with a quartic interaction. Using the variational formulation, we prove nonnormalizability of the Gibbs measure. When $d = 2$, our argument provides an alternative proof of the nonnormalizability result for the focusing $\Phi ^4_2$-measure by Brydges and Slade (1996). Furthermore, we provide a precise rate of divergence, where the constant is characterized by the optimal constant for a certain Bernstein’s inequality on $\mathbb R^d$. We also go over the construction of the focusing Gibbs measure with a cubic interaction. In the appendices, we present (a) nonnormalizability of the Gibbs measure for the two-dimensional Zakharov system and (b) the construction of focusing quartic Gibbs measures with smoother base Gaussian measures, showing a critical nature of the log-correlated Gibbs measure with a focusing quartic interaction.

We consider a specific realization of the renormalization group $(\text{RG})$ transformation acting on functional measures for scalar quantum fields which are expressible as a polymer expansion times an ultra-violet cutoff Gaussian measure. The new and improved definitions and estimates we present are sufficiently general and powerful to allow iteration of the transformation, hence the analysis of complete renormalization group flows, and hence the construction of a variety of scalar quantum field theories.