Related papers: Unitarity, stability and loops of unstable ghosts
In the framework of asymptotic safety, we study quantum quadratic gravity in the presence of the Higgs field considered as non-separable from the vacuum. The theory flows to a high energy fixed point where the Higgs field is strongly…
In this paper we introduce a perturbatively super-renormalizable and unitary theory of quantum gravity in any dimension D. The theory presents two entire functions, a.k.a. "form factors", and a finite number of local operators required by…
Adding terms quadratic in the curvature to the Einstein-Hilbert action renders gravity renormalizable. This property is preserved in the presence of the most general renormalizable couplings with (and of) a generic quantum field theory…
We review the formulation of quantum field theories with purely virtual particles, a new type of degrees of freedom that can mediate interactions without ever appear as external on-shell states. This property allows to solve the problem of…
We study the perturbative unitarity of the Lee-Wick models, formulated as nonanalytically Wick rotated Euclidean theories. The complex energy plane is divided into disconnected regions and the values of a loop integral in the various…
We revisit nonsingular cosmologies in which the limiting curvature hypothesis is realized. We study the cosmological perturbations of the theory and determine the general criteria for stability. For the simplest model, we find generic…
Unitarity is the fundamental property of the S-matrix while its usage for a scattering of unstable particles has been subtle as unstable particles do not appear in the asymptotic states. Defining unstable-particle amplitudes as residues of…
Motivated by Weinberg's asymptotic safety scenario, we investigate the gravitational renormalization group flow in the Einstein-Hilbert truncation supplemented by the wave-function renormalization of the ghost fields. The latter induces…
In this work we explore general leading singularities of one-loop amplitudes in higher-derivative Yang-Mills and quadratic gravity. These theories are known to possess propagators which contain quadratic and quartic momentum dependence,…
We review results on small-data global stability and highlight their applicability to classical interacting scalar fields with opposite-sign kinetic terms (ghosts). Further, we present a one-parameter family of numerical scattering…
Classical instability in fourth order gravity is cured at the expense of unitarity. The appearance of hidden degrees of freedom replicating those of ordinary matter allows for ordinary thermodynamic entropy and black hole entropy to be…
We consider the asymptotic-safety scenario for quantum gravity which constructs a non-perturbatively renormalisable quantum gravity theory with the help of the functional renormalisation group. We verify the existence of a non-Gaussian…
A quantum ghost that destabilizes the Schwarzschild solution, transforming it into a naked singularity, may seem like a physicist's worst nightmare. However, we argue that this scenario represents the natural evolution of a black hole…
Unstable particles are notorious in perturbative quantum field theory for producing singular propagators in scattering amplitudes that require regularization by the finite width. In this review I discuss the construction of an effective…
The unphysical spin-2 massive degrees of freedom in higher derivative gravity may be either massive unphysical ghosts or tachyonic ghosts. In the last case there is no Planck-scale threshold protecting vacuum cosmological solutions from…
We consider the dynamical stability of a class of static, spherically-symmetric solutions of the nonsymmetric gravitational theory. We numerically reproduce the Wyman solution and generate new solutions for the case where the theory has a…
The stability of the cosmological event horizons found recently by Gregory [Phys. Rev. D54, 4955 (1996)] for a class of non-static global cosmic strings is studied. It is shown that they are not stable to both test particles and physical…
We present a new method to analytically prove global stability in ghost-ridden dynamical systems. Our proposal encompasses all prior results and consequentially extends them. In particular, we show that stability can follow from a conserved…
Unimodular gravity is classically equivalent to General Relativity. This equivalence extends to actions which are functions of the curvature scalar. At the quantum level, the dynamics could differ. Most importantly, the cosmological…
In a recent paper, we presented a nonperturbative higher order generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) that is consistent with various proposals of quantum gravity such as string theory, loop quantum gravity, doubly special relativity, and…