Related papers: Non-perturbative unitarity and fictitious ghosts i…

F-theory in its most general sense should be a theory defined on a worldvolume of higher dimension than the worldsheet, that reproduces string results perturbatively but includes nonperturbative supergravity solutions at the first-quantized…

We hereby introduce and extensively study a class of non-polynomial higher derivative theories of gravity that realize a ultraviolet (UV) completion of Einstein general relativity. These theories are unitary (ghost free) and at most only…

We explicitly confirm that spatially flat non-singular bouncing cosmologies make sense as effective theories. The presence of a non-singular bounce in a spatially flat universe implies a temporary violation of the null energy condition,…

The unitarity condition for scattering amplitudes in a non-anticommutative quantum field theory is investigated. The Cutkosky rules are shown to hold for Feynman diagrams in Euclidean momentum space and unitarity of amplitudes can be…

In this paper we consider a parity violating gravity model without higher derivatives, thus ghost free. This model is constructed from the tetrad and its derivatives and coupled to a dynamical scalar field, like axion. It can be reduced…

Numerous claims in the literature suggest that gravity induced on a higher co-dimensional surface violates unitarity in the weak coupling regime. However, it remained unclear, why a conserved source localized on this surface and giving rise…

In this paper we will study Lorentz-invariant, infinite derivative quantum field theories, where infinite derivatives give rise to non-local interactions at the energy scale $M_s$, beyond the Standard Model. We will study a specific class,…

We explore the possibility of parity-violating, nonminimally coupled 2-form field theories that retain the same dynamical degrees of freedom as a massive 2-form and thus are ghost-free. Starting from the most general kinetic terms and…

We work out the quantization of the massless vector field by introducing quantum supersymmetric ghosts. We prove positivity in the physical Fock space.

Canonical analysis of a recently proposed [1] linear+quadratic curvature gravity model in D=3 displays its pure fourth derivative quadratic branch as a ghost-free (massless) excitation. Hence it both negates an old no-go theorem and is…

We find that the recently-proposed ghost-free interaction of a 2-form gauge field in four dimensions, which contains derivative couplings in a nonperturbative manner, can be regarded as a resummation of ghostly interaction terms. We…

For a non-equilibrium physical system defined along a closed time path (CTP), a key constraint is the so-called largest time equation, which is a consequence of unitarity and implies causality. In this paper, we present a simple proof that…

In QCD both the quark and ghost propagators are important for governing the non-perturbative dynamics of the theory. It turns out that the dynamical properties of the quark and ghost fields impose non-perturbative constraints on the…

Within the background field formalism of quantum gravity, I show that if the quantum fluctuations are limited to diffeomorphic gauge transformations rather than the physical degrees of freedom, as in conventional quantum field theory, all…

Using the Dirac constraint method we show that the pure fourth-order Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator model is free of observable negative norm states. Even though such ghosts do appear when the fourth order theory is coupled to a second order…

In this note, we attempt to provide some insights into the structure of non-perturbative descriptions of quantum gravity using known examples of gauge-theory / gravity duality. We argue that in familiar examples, a quantum description of…

We prove that many cosmological models characterized by vectors nonminimally coupled to the curvature (such as the Turner-Widrow mechanism for the production of magnetic fields during inflation, and models of vector inflation or vector…

We encounter these demons on the path towards a UV complete QFT of gravity and a horizonless replacement for black holes. The fate of the ghost is discussed in the strong coupling version of classically-scale-invariant quadratic gravity.…

Poincar\'e gauge theories provide an approach to gravity based on the gauging of the Poincar\'e group, whose homogeneous part generates curvature while the translational sector gives rise to torsion. In this note we revisit the stability of…

We explore the possibility that theories with negative kinetic energy (ghosts) can be meta-stable up to cosmologically long times. In classical mechanics, ghosts undergo spontaneous lockdown rather than run-away if weakly-coupled and…