Related papers: Counting ghosts in the "ghost-free" non-local grav…
We remark that Ostrogradsky ghosts in higher-derivative gravity, with a finite number of derivatives, are fictitious as they result from an unjustified truncation performed in a complete theory containing infinitely many curvature…
We study the stability of theories where the gravitational action has arbitrary algebraic dependence on the three first traces of the Riemann tensor: the Ricci tensor, the co-Ricci tensor, and the homothetic curvature tensor. We…
We introduce new techniques that can preserve unitarity of the system including ghost particles. Negative norms of the particles can be involved in zero-norm states by constraints of the physical space. These are useful to apply the…
We investigate de Sitter solutions in non-local gravity as well as in non-local gravity with Lagrange constraint multiplier. We examine a condition to avoid a ghost and discuss a screening scenario for a cosmological constant in de Sitter…
In this work we shall study ghost-free non-local $F(R)$ gravity models. Firstly we shall demonstrate how the ghost degrees of freedom may occur in the non-local $F(R)$ gravity models, and accordingly we shall modify appropriately the…
A possible nonlinear completion of massive gravity of the Fierz-Pauli type is proposed. The theory describes a system consisting of a massive tensor field of the Fierz-Pauli type and an additional massive vector field. Massless limit as…
It is commonly believed that the dRGT theory is the unique way to describe a massive spin-2 field without ghosts. While dRGT is arguably the most elegant massive gravity theory, it seems that it may not be the unique ghost-free one if one…
In this paper we consider the issue of massive gravity from a pure field theoretical point of view, as the massive deformation of the gauge theory for a symmetric rank-2 tensor field. We look for the most general massive theory with well…
The possibility of flat metric solutions in the presence of arbitrary, in particular, Planck mass sized cosmological constants is investigated within multigravity theory, the ghost-free theory of $(N+1)$ rank-2 tensor fields comprising one…
We construct four-dimensional covariant non-linear theories of massive gravity which are ghost-free in the decoupling limit to all orders. These theories resum explicitly all the nonlinear terms of an effective field theory of massive…
We consider a class of non-local gravity theories where the Lagrangian is a function of powers of the inverse d'Alembertian operator acting on the Ricci scalar. We take an approach in which the non-local Lagrangian is made local by…
We suggest a class of generally covariant ghost-free nonlocal gravity models generating de Sitter or Anti-de Sitter background with an arbitrary value of the effective cosmological constant and featuring a mechanism of dark matter…
The aim of these notes is to provide a self-contained review of why it is generically a problem when a solution of a theory possesses ghost fields among the perturbation modes. We define what a ghost field is and we show that its presence…
We argue that theories with ghosts may have a long lived vacuum state even if all interactions are Lorentz preserving. In space-time dimension D = 2, we consider the tree level decay rate of the vacuum into ghosts and ordinary particles…
A nonlocal gravity model based on $\frac1{\square} R$ achieves the phenomenological goals of generating cosmic acceleration without dark energy and of suppressing the growth of perturbations compared to the $\Lambda$CDM model. Although the…
We review some of the recent results which can be useful for better understanding of the problem of stability of vacuum and in general classical solutions in higher derivative quantum gravity. The fourth derivative terms in the purely…
We encounter these demons on the path towards a UV complete QFT of gravity and a horizonless replacement for black holes. The fate of the ghost is discussed in the strong coupling version of classically-scale-invariant quadratic gravity.…
Tachyon condensation in quantum field theory (QFT) plays a central role in models of fundamental interactions and cosmology. Inspired by tower truncation in string field theory, ultraviolet completions were proposed with infinite-derivative…
We exhibit novel effects (absent in GR) of sources in massive gravity. First, we show that removing its ghost mode forces a field-current identity: The metric's trace is locally proportional to that of its stress tensor; a point source…
Theories with infinite volume extra dimensions open exciting opportunities for particle physics. We argued recently that along with attractive features there are phenomenological difficulties in this class of models. In fact, there is no…