Related papers: Ghost Problems from Pauli-Villars to Fourth-Order …
In the first order formalism of gravitational theories, the spacetime connection is considered as an independent variable to vary together with the metric. However, the metric still generates its Levi-Civita connection that turns out to…
We give a simple discussion of ghosts, unitarity violation, negative norm states and quantum vs classical behavior in the simplest model with four derivative action - the Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator. We also point out that the normalizable…
The first mathematically consistent exact equations of quantum gravity in the Heisenberg representation and Hamilton gauge are obtained. It is shown that the path integral over the canonical variables in the Hamilton gauge is mathematically…
The quantum theory of a free particle on a portion of two-dimensional Euclidean space bounded by a circle and subject to non-local boundary conditions gives rise to bulk and surface states. Starting from this well known property, a…
We discuss aspects of non-perturbative unitarity in quantum field theory. The additional ghost degrees of freedom arising in "truncations" of an effective action at a finite order in derivatives could be fictitious degrees of freedom. Their…
In this review we discuss the connection between two seemingly disparate topics, macroscopic gravity on astrophysical scales and Hamiltonians that are not Hermitian but $PT$ symmetric on microscopic ones. In particular we show that the…
Chiral, conformal and ghost number anomalies are discussed from the viewpoint of the quantum vacuum in Hamiltonian formalism. After introducing the energy cut-off, we derive known anomalies in a new way. We show that the physical origin of…
Galileons are higher-derivative theories of a real scalar which nevertheless admit second order equations of motion. They have interesting applications as dark energy models and in early universe cosmology, and have been conjectured to…
One of the remarkable differences between renormalizable quantum gravity with four-derivative action and its superrenormalizable polynomial generalizations is that the latter admit a more sophisticated particle mass spectrum. Already in the…
Recent work has shown that non-local modifications of the Einstein equations can have interesting cosmological consequences and can provide a dynamical origin for dark energy, consistent with existing data. At first sight these theories are…
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…
Ghost fields have reemerged in a handful of phenomenologically motivated cosmological and particle physics scenarios, and most recently in a cyclic mechanism to address the fine-tuning of gauge couplings in the standard model. We study the…
We show that starting with a cosmological constant in a curved space-time, the Einstein-Hilbert term of general relativity is generated through a ghost condensation. We fix Weyl symmetry, or equivalently local scale symmetry by a gauge…
Quantum theory can be formulated with certain non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. An anti-linear involution, denoted by PT, is a symmetry of such Hamiltonians. In the PT-symmetric regime the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian is related to a Hermitian one…
This essay contends that in quantum gravity, some spatial regions do not admit a unitary Hilbert space. Because the gravitational path integral spontaneously breaks CPT symmetry, "states" with negative probability can be identified on…
Through use of the Pauli-Villars regulator procedure we construct a second- plus fourth-order-derivative theory of gravity that serves as an ultraviolet completion of standard second-order-derivative quantum Einstein gravity that is…
We study the metric perturbations around the de Sitter and Minkowski backgrounds in Conformal Gravity. We confirm the presence of ghosts in both cases. In the de Sitter case, by applying the Maldacena boundary conditions - the Neumann…
The stability of higher-order time derivative theories using the polymer extension of quantum mechanics is studied. First, we focus on the well-known Pais-Uhlenbeck model and by casting the theory into the sum of two decoupled The…
Motivated by the apparent dependence of string $\sigma$--models on the sum of spacetime metric and antisymmetric tensor fields, we reconsider gravity theories constructed from a nonsymmetric metric. We first show that all such "geometrical"…
Unitarity of scale-invariant coupled theory of higher-derivative gravity and matter is investigated. A scalar field coupled with dirac fermion is taken as matter sector.Following the idea of induced gravity Einstein-Hilbert term is…