Related papers: Quantum field theory with ghost pairs
With fourth-order derivative theories leading to propagators of the generic ghost-like $1/(k^2-M_1^2)-1/(k^2-M_2^2)$ form, it would appear that such theories have negative norm ghost states and are not unitary. However on constructing the…
Ghost fields in quantum field theory have been a long-standing problem. Specifically, theories with higher derivatives involve ghosts that appear in the Hamiltonian in the form of linear momenta term, which is commonly known as the…
We study the main options for a unitary and renormalizable, local quantum field theory of the gravitational interactions. The first model is a Lee-Wick superrenormalizable higher-derivative gravity, formulated as a nonanalytically Wick…
The intrinsic presence of ghosts in the symmetric teleparallel framework is elucidated. We illustrate our general arguments in $f(\mathbb{Q})$ theories by studying perturbations in the three inequivalent spatially flat cosmologies. Two of…
We construct a supersymmetric (1+1)-dimensional field theory involving extra derivatives and associated ghosts: the spectrum of the Hamiltonian is not bounded from below, neither from above. In spite of that, there is neither classical, nor…
Ghosts have been a stumbling block in the development of a UV complete quantum field theory for gravity. We discuss how difficulties associated with ghosts are overcome in the context of 0+1d QFT. Obtaining a probability interpretation is…
Quantum field theories (QFTs) including fourth-derivative terms such as the Lee-Wick finite QED and quadratic gravity have a better ultra-violet behavior compared to standard theories with second-derivative ones, but the existence of ghost…
We prove the unitarity of the Euclidean nonlocal scalar field theory to all perturbative orders in the loop expansion. The amplitudes in the Euclidean space are calculated assuming that all the particles have purely imaginary energies, and…
We study the perturbative unitarity of non-commutative quantum Yang-Mills theories, extending previous investigations on scalar field theories to the gauge case where non-locality mingles with the presence of unphysical states. We…
We investigate the non-perturbative quantization of phantom and ghost degrees of freedom by relating their representations in definite and indefinite inner product spaces. For a large class of potentials, we argue that the same physical…
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…
In this paper we present an iterative method to generate an infinite class of new nonlocal field theories whose propagators are ghost-free. We first examine the scalar field case and show that the pole structure of such generalized…
An alternative to the effective field theory approach to treat ghosts in higher derivative theories is to attempt to integrate them out via the Euclidean path integral formalism. It has been suggested that this method could provide a…
Gravitational interactions of higher spin fields are generically plagued by inconsistencies. We present a simple framework that couples higher spins to a broad class of gravitational backgrounds (including Ricci flat and Einstein)…
We introduce new techniques that can preserve unitarity of the system including ghost particles. Negative norms of the particles can be involved in zero-norm states by constraints of the physical space. These are useful to apply the…
We establish a non-renormalization theorem for a class of ghost-free local functionals describing massive vector field theories coupled to dynamical geometry. Under the assumptions of locality, Lorentz invariance, and validity of the…
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 explore how the stability of metric perturbations in higher derivative theories of gravity depends on the energy scale of initial seeds of such perturbations and on a typical energy scale of the gravitational vacuum background. It is…
A higher derivative term is introduced in the kinetic energy of the Higgs Lagrangian in the minimal Standard Model. A logically consistent and {\it finite} field theory is obtained when some excitations of the Higgs field are quantized with…
The role of higher derivative operators in 4D effective field theories is discussed in both non-supersymmetric and supersymmetric contexts. The approach, formulated in the Minkowski space-time, shows that theories with higher derivative…