Related papers: Exorcising the Ostrogradsky ghost in coupled syste…
If a higher derivative theory arises from a transformation of variables that involves time derivatives, a tailor-made Hamiltonian formulation is shown to exist. The details and advantages of this elegant Hamiltonian formulation, which…
The problems that are connected with Lagrangians which depend on higher order derivatives (namely additional degrees of freedom, unbound energy from below, etc.) are absent if effective Lagrangians are considered because the equations of…
We consider higher-order derivative interactions beyond second-order generalized Proca theories that propagate only the three desired polarizations of a massive vector field besides the two tensor polarizations from gravity. These new…
We systematically construct ghost-free scalar-tensor theories whose Lagrangian includes up to third-order derivatives of the scalar field. Using a spatially covariant action written in terms of the ADM variables, we impose degeneracy and…
Ostrogradsky's method allows one to construct Hamiltonian formulation for a higher derivative system. An application of this approach to the Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator yields the Hamiltonian which is unbounded from below. This leads to the…
We investigate the existence and behavior of oscillons in theories in which higher derivative terms are present in the Lagrangian, such as galileons. Such theories have emerged in a broad range of settings, from higher-dimensional models,…
In this work, we investigate higher-derivative quantum field theories and the problem of Ostrogradsky instability within an open-system Keldysh-Lindblad framework. Coupling the ghost sector to dissipative baths generates non-perturbative…
We carry out the extension of the covariant Ostrogradski method to fermionic field theories. Higher-derivative Lagrangians reduce to second order differential ones with one explicit independent field for each degree of freedom.
We study the constrained Ostrogradski-Hamilton framework for the equations of motion provided by mechanical systems described by second-order derivative actions with a linear dependence in the accelerations. We stress out the peculiar…
This contribution reviews scalar-tensor theories whose Lagrangian contains second-order derivatives of a scalar field but nevertheless propagate only one scalar mode (in addition to the usual two tensor modes), and are thus not plagued with…
Recently, a generalization of invertible disformal transformations containing higher-order derivatives of a scalar field has been proposed in the context of scalar-tensor theories of gravity. By applying this generalized disformal…
We introduce a new class of scalar-tensor theories that extend Horndeski, or "generalized galileon", models. Despite possessing equations of motion of higher order in derivatives, we show that the true propagating degrees of freedom obey…
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…
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 the O(3) or CP(1) nonlinear sigma model as an effective field theory in a derivative expansion, with the most general Lagrangian that obeys O(3), parity and Lorentz symmetry. We work out the complete list of possible operators…
A necessary condition for a generally covariant scalar-tensor theory to be ghostfree is that it contains no extra degrees of freedom in the unitary gauge, in which the Lagrangian corresponds to the spatially covariant gravity. Comparing…
Most existing theories of dark energy and/or modified gravity, involving a scalar degree of freedom, can be conveniently described within the framework of the Effective Theory of Dark Energy, based on the unitary gauge where the scalar…
We consider a class of Lagrangians that depend not only on some configurational variables and their first time derivatives, but also on second time derivatives, thereby leading to fourth-order evolution equations. The proposed higher-order…
In the generalized Hamiltonian formalism by Dirac, the method of constructing the generator of local-symmetry transformations for systems with first- and second-class constraints (without restrictions on the algebra of constraints) is…
In physics, all dynamical equations that describe fundamental interactions are second order ordinary differential equations in the time derivatives. In the literature, this property is traced back to a result obtained by Ostrogradski in the…