Related papers: Ghost-free theories with arbitrary higher-order ti…
We classify higher-order Maxwell-Einstein theories linear in the curvature tensor and quadratic in the derivatives of the electromagnetic field strength whose kinetic matrices are degenerate. This provides a generalisation of quadratic…
We continue McCartor and Robertson's recent demonstration of the indispensability of ghost fields in the light-cone gauge quantization of gauge fields. It is shown that the ghost fields are indispensable in deriving well-defined…
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…
In this work we shall address the ghost issue of $F\left( R,\mathcal{G} \right)$ gravity, which is known to be plagued with ghost degrees of freedom. These ghosts occur due to the presence of higher than two derivatives in the field…
Invertible disformal transformations serve as a useful tool to explore ghost-free scalar-tensor theories. In this paper, we construct a generalization of invertible disformal transformations that involves arbitrary higher-order covariant…
Our purpose in this paper is to analyze the Pais-Uhlenbeck (PU) oscillator using complex canonical transformations. We show that starting from a Lagrangian approach we obtain a transformation that makes the extended PU oscillator, with…
The Ostrogradski ghost problem that appears in higher derivative theories containing constraints has been considered here. Specifically we have considered systems where only the second class constraints appear. For these kind of systems, it…
In this work we develop a theoretical framework for Gauss-Bonnet modified gravity theories, in which ghost modes can be eliminated at the equations of motion level. Particularly, after we present how the ghosts can occur at the level of…
The ultraviolet completion of gauge theories by higher derivative terms can dramatically change their behavior at high energies. The requirement of asymptotic freedom imposes very stringent constraints that are only satisfied by a small…
A {\em complex} canonical transformation is found that takes the fourth order derivative Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator into two independent harmonic oscillators thus showing that this model has energy bounded from below, unitary time-evolution…
We discuss the no-ghost theorem in the massive gravity in a covariant manner. Using the BRST formalism and St\"{u}ckelberg fields, we first clarify how the Boulware-Deser ghost decouples in the massive gravity theory with Fierz-Pauli mass…
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 present a solution to the ghost problem in fourth order derivative theories. In particular we study the Pais-Uhlenbeck fourth order oscillator model, a model which serves as a prototype for theories which are based on second plus fourth…
We investigate ghost-free vector-tensor theories in metric-affine geometry. In all of our analysis, we start with the Lagrangian containing up to quadratic terms of first-order derivatives of a vector field. To obtain ghost-free…
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…
The unimodular version of the ghost-free higher derivative gravity is obtained. It is the unimodular reduction of some particular lagrangians quadratic in curvature.
In this paper we study the most general covariant action of gravity up to terms that are quadratic in curvature. In particular this includes non-local, infinite derivative theories of gravity which are ghost-free and exhibit asymptotic…
The structure of the Euler-Lagrange equations for a general Lagrangian theory is studied. For these equations we present a reduction procedure to the so-called canonical form. In the canonical form the equations are solved with respect to…
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 propose a novel method to construct ghost-free multiple scalar-tensor theories. The key idea is to use the geometric quantities of hypersurfaces defined by the scalar fields, rather than the covariant derivatives of scalar fields or…