Related papers: Classical and quantum ghosts
The effective field theory of massive gravity had long been formulated in a generally covariant way arXiv:hep-th/0210184. Using this formalism, it has been found recently that there exists a class of massive nonlinear theories that are free…
We study patterns of quantum entanglement in systems of spins and ghost-spins regarding them as simple quantum mechanical toy models for theories containing negative norm states. We define a single ghost-spin as in arXiv:1602.06505 [hep-th]…
A generalized Hamiltonian definition of ghost surfaces (surfaces defined by an action-gradient flow) is given and specialized to the usual Lagrangian definition. Numerical calculations show uncorrected quadratic-flux-minimizing (QFMin) and…
Gravitational decoherence (GD) refers to the effects of gravity in actuating the classical appearance of a quantum system. Because the underlying processes involve issues in general relativity (GR), quantum field theory (QFT) and quantum…
Theories with curvature squared terms in the action are known to contain ghost modes in general. However, if we regard curvature squared terms as quantum corrections to the original theory, the emergence of ghosts may be simply due to the…
A cosmology inspired structure for phase space is introduced, which leads to finitization and lattice-like discretization of position and momentum eigenvalues in a preferred, cosmic frame. Lorentz invariance is broken at very high energies,…
Einstein's theory of gravity admits a low energy effective quantum field description from which predictions beyond classical general relativity can be drawn. As gravitational wave detectors improve, one may ask whether non-classical…
We study the consistency of having Lorentz invariance as a low energy approximation within the quantum field theory framework. A model with a scalar and a fermion field is used to show how a Lorentz invariance violating high momentum scale,…
In shift-symmetric Horndeski theories, a static and spherically symmetric black hole can support linearly time-dependent scalar hair. However, it was shown that such a solution generically suffers from ghost or gradient instability in the…
We address the consistency of Horava's proposal for a theory of quantum gravity from the low-energy perspective. We uncover the additional scalar degree of freedom arising from the explicit breaking of the general covariance and study its…
Contrary to what is often stated, a fundamental spacetime discreteness need not contradict Lorentz invariance. A causal set's discreteness is in fact locally Lorentz invariant, and we recall the reasons why. For illustration, we introduce a…
Analogue models of gravity have provided an experimentally realizable test field for our ideas on quantum field theory in curved spacetimes but they have also inspired the investigation of possible departures from exact Lorentz invariance…
The Pais-Uhlenbeck model is a quantum theory described by a higher-derivative field equation. It has been believed for many years that this model possesses ghost states (quantum states of negative norm) and therefore that this model is a…
We demonstrate that Cherenkov radiation can be interpreted as ghost instability of a certain type. Solutions of modified gravity theories often contain ghost instabilities. One type of such ghost instability is associated with existence of…
We explore the possibility of parity-violating, nonminimally coupled 2-form field theories that retain the same dynamical degrees of freedom as a massive 2-form and thus are ghost-free. Starting from the most general kinetic terms and…
As an example of what happens with physically relevant theories like effective gravity, we consider the covariant relativistic theory of a scalar field of arbitrarily higher differential order. A procedure based on the Legendre…
We consider stochastically quantized self-interacting scalar fields as suitable models to generate dark energy in the universe. Second quantization effects lead to new and unexpected phenomena is the self interaction strength is strong. The…
We consider the issue of stability at the linearized level for static, spherically symmetric wormhole solutions within a subclass of scalar-tensor theories of beyond Horndeski type. In this class of theories we derive a set of stability…
A mathematically well-defined, manifestly covariant theory of classical and quantum field is given, based on Euclidean Poisson algebras and a generalization of the Ehrenfest equation, which implies the stationary action principle. The…
Classical shadows are a computationally efficient approach to storing quantum states on a classical computer for the purposes of estimating expectation values of local observables, obtained by performing repeated random measurements. In…