Related papers: On avoiding Ostrogradski instabilities within Asym…
In this paper we present an iterative method to generate an infinite class of new nonlocal field theories whose propagators are ghost-free. We first examine the scalar field case and show that the pole structure of such generalized…
Negative kinetic energies correspond to ghost degrees of freedom, which are potentially of relevance for cosmology, quantum gravity, and high energy physics. We present a novel wide class of stable mechanical systems where a positive energy…
We study asymptotic safety of models of the higher derivative quantum gravity with and without matter. The beta functions are derived by utilizing the functional renormalization group, and non-trivial fixed points are found. It turns out…
We present a simple class of mechanical models where a canonical degree of freedom interacts with another one with a negative kinetic term, i.e. with a ghost. We prove analytically that the classical motion of the system is completely…
We revisit the issues of non-linear AdS stability, its relation to growing (secular) terms in naive perturbation theory around the AdS background, and the need and possible strategies for resumming such terms. To this end, we review a…
With standard Einstein gravity not being renormalizable at the quantum level there is much interest in studying higher-derivative quantum gravity theories. Thus just as a Ricci-scalar-based action produces a propagator that behaves as a…
A perturbative quantum theory of the 2-Killing vector reduction of general relativity is constructed. Although non-renormalizable in the standard sense, we show that to all orders of the loop expansion strict cut-off independence can be…
We discuss general momentum-dependent field redefinitions in the context of quantum-gravitational scattering amplitudes in general, and Asymptotic Safety in particular. Implementing such redefinitions at the lowest curvature order, we can…
Invertible disformal transformations are a useful tool to investigate ghost-free scalar-tensor theories. By performing a higher-derivative generalization of the invertible disformal transformation on Horndeski theories, we construct a novel…
Asymptotically Safe theories of gravity have recently received much attention. In this work we discuss a class of inflationary models derived from quantum-gravity modification of quadratic gravity according to the induced scaling around the…
We discuss the renormalisation group flow of all essential couplings of quantum gravity coupled to a shift-symmetric scalar field at fourth order in the derivative expansion. We derive the global structure of the phase diagram, and identify…
Interacting theories with higher derivatives involve ghosts. They correspond to instabilities that display themselves at the classical level. We notice that comparatively "benign" mechanical higher-derivative systems exist where the…
We compute the effective potential for scalar fields in asymptotically safe quantum gravity. A scaling potential and other scaling functions generalize the fixed point values of renormalizable couplings. The scaling potential takes a…
We derive an exact functional renormalization group equation for the projectable version of Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity. The flow equation encodes the gravitational degrees of freedom in terms of the lapse function, shift vector and spatial…
We confirm the recent claims that, in the infrared limit of Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity, the scalar graviton becomes a ghost if the sound speed squared is positive on the flat de Sitter and Minkowski background. In order to avoid the ghost…
Nonperturbative renormalization group techniques have recently proven a powerful tool to tackle the nontrivial infrared dynamics of light scalar fields in de Sitter space. In the present article, we develop the formalism beyond the local…
To find out the possible scenarios for quantum gravity consistent with the observed universe, we numerically investigate the non-perturbative renormalization group equations of a general quadratic gravity theory recently derived by Sen,…
In this thesis we investigate various fundamental aspects of asymptotically safe quantum gravity, in particular the compatibility of Asymptotic Safety with the requirements for background independence and unitarity. The first part contains…
We explore whether quantum gravity effects within the asymptotic safety paradigm can provide a predictive ultraviolet completion for Abelian gauge theories. We evaluate the effect of quantum gravity fluctuations on the running couplings in…
For unimodular gravity, we work out, by using dimensional regularization, the complete one-loop correction to the graviton propagator in any space-time dimension. The computation is carried out within the framework where unimodular gravity…