English

Unifying Ghost-Free Lorentz-Invariant Lagrangians

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-10-23 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We present the details of the novel framework for Lagrangian field theories that are Lorentz-invariant and lead to at most second order equations of motion. The use of antisymmetric structure is of crucial importance. The general ghost-free Lagrangians are constructed and then translated into the language of differential forms. The ghost-freeness has a geometric nature. A novel duality is proposed which generalizes the Hodge duality in Maxwell's theory. We discuss how the well-established theories are reformulated and propose many new theories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.05496,
  title  = {Unifying Ghost-Free Lorentz-Invariant Lagrangians},
  author = {Wenliang Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.05496},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

15 pages, two columns, v2; references added, typos corrected; discussion improved about graviton kinetic terms

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:23:39.477Z