Related papers: Is negative kinetic energy meta-stable?
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 argue that Lee-Wick's complex ghost appearing in any higher derivative theory is stable and its asymptotic field exists. It may be more appropriate to call it ``anti-unstable" in the sense that, the more the ghost `decays' into lighter…
We consider a wide class of cascading gauge theories which usually lead to runaway behaviour in the IR, and discuss possible deformations of the superpotential at the bottom of the cascade which stabilize the runaway direction and provide…
The recently proposed infrared modification of gravity through the introduction of a ghost scalar field results in a number of interesting cosmological and phenomenological implications. In this paper, we derive the exact cosmological…
In general relativity producing a regular bounce entails violation of Null Energy Condition for a dynamical source in the model. That generically indicates existence of ghosts or other instabilities. However, in cuscuton modification of…
One of the obstacles to reconciling quantum theory with general relativity, is constructing a theory which is both consistent with observation, and and gives finite answers at high energy, so that the theory holds at arbitrarily short…
We show that a class of nonlocal gravity models, proposed to explain current cosmic acceleration without dark energy, passes two major tests: First, they can be defined so as not to alter the, observationally correct, general relativity…
Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a theory with…
We present an approach to the problem of vacuum energy in cosmology, based on dynamical screening of Lambda on the horizon scale. We review first the physical basis of vacuum energy as a phenomenon connected with macroscopic boundary…
The idea that the cosmological term, Lambda, should be a time dependent quantity in cosmology is a most natural one. It is difficult to conceive an expanding universe with a strictly constant vacuum energy density, namely one that has…
We study a metric cubic gravity theory considering odd-parity modes of linear inhomogeneous perturbations on a spatially homogeneous Bianchi type I manifold close to the isotropic de Sitter spacetime. We show that in the regime of small…
We investigate a generalized power-law dark energy equation of state of the form $p = w\rho - \beta\rho^m$ in a flat FLRW universe, analyzing its dynamical stability and thermodynamic consistency. The model exhibits a rich phase space…
We show that phantom dark energy, if it is described by a K-essence theory, has three fundamental problems: first, its hamiltonian is unbounded from below. Second, classical stability precludes the equation of state from crossing the…
A vacuum instability due to a massless ghost in a hidden sector can lead to an effective equation of state for dark energy that changes smoothly from $w=-3/2$ at large redshifts, to $w\approx-1.2$ today, to $w=-1$ in the future. We discuss…
The cosmological constant problem can be understood as the failure of the decoupling principle behind effective field theory, so that some quantities in the low-energy theory are extremely sensitive to the high-energy properties. While this…
We show that dynamical dark energy theories can imprint $O(1)$ modifications on the quasi-normal mode (QNM) spectrum characterising black hole ringdown. The time dependence of dynamical dark energy naturally gives rise to cosmological…
We construct explicit examples of globally regular static, spherically symmetric solutions in general relativity with scalar and electromagnetic fields, describing traversable wormholes with flat and AdS asymptotics and regular black holes,…
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…
Within the quantum mechanical treatment of the decay problem one finds that at late times $t$ the survival probability of an unstable state cannot have the form of an exponentially decreasing function of time $t$ but it has an inverse…
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…