Related papers: Exorcising Ghosts in Induced Gravity
We explore perturbations about a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background in Chern-Simons gravity. At large momenta one of the two circularly polarized tensor modes becomes ghostlike. We argue that nevertheless the theory does not exhibit…
We review the interpretation of gauge invariance as a mathematical redundancy required in a relativistic description of forces mediated by massless spin-1 and spin-2 particles. In this context we also review the Weinberg-Witten theorem and…
We study the general class of gravitational field theories constructed on the basis of scale invariance (and therefore absence of any mass parameters) and invariance under transverse diffeomorphisms (TDiff), which are the 4-volume…
We consider a local phenomenological model to explain a non-local gravity scenario which has been proposed to address dark energy issues. This non-local gravity action has been seen to fit the data as well as $\Lambda$-CDM and therefore…
Perturbation theory for gravity in dimensions greater than two requires higher derivatives in the free action. Higher derivatives seem to lead to ghosts, states with negative norm. We consider a fourth order scalar field theory and show…
In light of recent progress in ghost-free theories of massive gravity and multi-gravity, we reconsider the problem of constructing a ghost-free theory of an interacting spin-2 field charged under a U(1) gauge symmetry. Our starting point is…
Albert Einstein's General Relativity (GR) from 1916 has become the widely accepted theory of gravity and been tested observationally to a very high precision at different scales of energy and distance. At the same time, there still remain…
We show that scale invariance provides a solution to the fine tuning problem of the cosmological constant. We construct a generalization of the standard model of particle physics which displays exact quantum scale invariance. The matter…
In order to explore some general features of modified theories of gravity which involve higher derivatives and spontaneous Lorentz and/or diffeomorphism symmetry breaking, we study the recently proposed new version of covariant…
We consider a hybrid metric-Palatini theory whose action depends on the metric and Palatini scalar curvatures, together with the corresponding quadratic Ricci invariants, through an arbitrary function…
We study the cosmological evolution of an induced gravity model with a self-interacting scalar field $\sigma$ and in the presence of matter and radiation. Such model leads to Einstein Gravity plus a cosmological constant as a stable…
A new class of gravity-matter model defined with an independent non-Riemannian volume form is studied, in the second order formalism. The action has a global scale invariance symmetry, which can be broken by the equation of motion of the…
We construct the consistent ghost-free covariant scalar-vector-tensor gravity theories with second order equations of motion with derivative interactions. We impose locality, unitarity, Lorentz invariance and pseudo-Riemannian geometry as…
We analyze $SO(N)$ and $SU(N)$ gauge theories with scalars in adjoint and fundamental representations, coupled to renormalisable, classically scale invariant gravity. In the specific case of $SO(12),$ we show that the quantum field theory…
Curvature squared terms, when added to the Einstein-Hilbert action and treated non-perturbatively, generically result in the propagation of an extra massive scalar state and an extra massive spin-2 ghost state. Using the Stueckelberg trick,…
Quantum theory of conformal factor coupled with matter fields is investigated. The more simple case of the purely classical scalar matter is considered. It is calculated the conformal factor contribution to the effective potential of scalar…
$f(R)$ supergravity is known to contain a ghost mode associated with higher-derivative terms if it contains $R^n$ with $n$ greater than two.We remove the ghost in $f(R)$ supergravity by introducing auxiliary gauge field to absorb the ghost.…
Recently a scale invariant theory of gravity was constructed by imposing a conformal symmetry on general relativity. The imposition of this symmetry changed the configuration space from superspace - the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics…
A constraint of vanishing energy-momentum tensor is motivated by a variety of perspectives on quantum gravity. We demonstrate in a concrete example how this constraint leads to a metric-independent theory in which quantum gravity emerges as…
We analyse scale invariant quadratic quantum gravity incorporating non-minimal coupling to a multiplet of scalar fields in a gauge theory, with particular emphasis on the consequences for its interpretation resulting from a transformation…