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Unitarity issues in higher derivative field theories

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-09-03 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We analyze the unitarity properties of higher derivative quantum field theories which are free of ghosts and ultraviolet singularities. We point out that in spite of the absence of ghosts most of these theories are not unitary. This result confirms the difficulties of finding a consistent quantum field theory of quantum gravity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.01036,
  title  = {Unitarity issues in higher derivative field theories},
  author = {Manuel Asorey and Lesław Rachwał and Ilya Shapiro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.01036},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

8 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:09:52.359Z