Related papers: Unitarity, stability and loops of unstable ghosts
We analyze the unitarity properties of higher derivative quantum field theories which are free of ghosts and ultraviolet singularities. We point out that in spite of the absence of ghosts most of these theories are not unitary. This result…
The main subject of the paper is the description of unstable states in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Unstable states in quantum field theory can only be introduced as the intermediate states and not as asymptotic states. The…
As a most promising candidate for quantum theory of the gravity, the superstring theory has attracted many researchers including cosmologists. It is expected that the cosmological initial singularity is avoided within the context of the…
We consider the subtleties involved in the application of the Equivalence Theorem to the decay of an unstable Higgs particle. This is formally justified from consideration of unitarity and resonant elastic scattering of the stable decay…
Stable states (particles), ghosts and unstables states (particles) are discussed with respect to the time representations involved, their unitary groups and the induced Hilbert spaces. Unstable particles with their decay channels are…
We reconsider the Lee-Wick (LW) models and compare their properties to the properties of the models that contain purely virtual particles. We argue against the LW premise that unstable particles can be removed from the sets of incoming and…
In quadratic gravity, with a positive Weyl squared coefficient, the extra spin-2 sector is shown to correspond to a dual inverted harmonic oscillator, instead of a ghost. Using the Wightman spectrum condition, we prove that the associated…
In this paper dynamics and quantum mechanical coherent states of a simple harmonic oscillator are considered in the framework of Generalized Uncertainty Principle(GUP). Equations of motion for simple harmonic oscillator are derived and some…
Many theories of modified gravity with higher order derivatives are usually ignored because of serious problems that appear due to an additional ghost degree of freedom. Most dangerously, it causes an immediate decay of the vacuum. However,…
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…
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 investigate the stability against inhomogeneous perturbations and the appearance of ghost modes in Gauss-Bonnet gravitational theories with a non-minimally coupled scalar field, which can be regarded as either the dilaton or a…
We show how the state of an unstable particle can be defined in terms of stable asymptotic states. This general definition is used to discuss and to solve some old problems connected with the short-time and large-time behaviour of the…
An oscillating, compact Friedmann universe with a massive conformally coupled scalar field is studied in the framework of quantum cosmology. The scalar field is treated as a perturbation and we look for solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt…
We investigate the scattering of two scalar glueballs in pure YM theory, using the well known dilaton potential. We perform the calculations considering a glueball mass of about $m_G \approx 1.7$ GeV, as predicted by lattice QCD. We begin…
Finding effective theories of modified gravity that can resolve cosmological singularities and avoid other physical pathologies such as ghost and gradient instabilities has turned out to be a rather difficult task. The concept of limiting…
We perform a thorough study of the theoretical consistency of recently proposed, viable, quadratic modifications of gravity that are functions of the the Gauss-Bonnet invariant, regarding the stability of their perturbations around vacuum,…
In a class of generalized Einstein's gravity theories we derive the equations and general asymptotic solutions describing the evolution of the perturbed universe in unified forms. Our gravity theory considers general couplings between the…
Unimodular gravity (UG) is an interesting theory that may explain why the cosmological constant is extremely small, in contrast to general relativity (GR). The theory has only the transverse diffeomorphism invariance and this causes lots of…
Just like the vector bosons in Abelian and non-Abelian gauge theories, gravitons can attain mass by spontaneous local symmetry breaking. The question is whether this can happen in a Lorentz-invariant way. We consider the use of four scalar…