Related papers: Anti-Instability of Complex Ghost
The dressed propagator of a ghost coupled to ordinary fields develops a pair of complex conjugate poles in the first Riemann sheet above the multi-particle threshold. We study the implications of this pole structure for the asymptotic field…
We present a new understanding of the unstable ghost-like resonance which appears in theories such as quadratic gravity and Lee-Wick type theories. Quantum corrections make this resonance unstable, such that it does not appear in the…
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…
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…
We explore the nonlinear dynamics of classical field theories containing ghost degrees of freedom, focusing on two coupled scalar fields with opposite kinetic terms in (1+1) and (2+1) dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Using a spacetime…
The inclusion of higher derivatives is a necessary condition for a renormalizable or superrenormalizable local theory of quantum gravity. On the other hand, higher derivatives lead to classical instabilities and a loss of unitarity at the…
The aim of these notes is to provide a self-contained review of why it is generically a problem when a solution of a theory possesses ghost fields among the perturbation modes. We define what a ghost field is and we show that its presence…
We study the creation and evolution of cosmological perturbations in renormalizable quadratic gravity with a Weyl term. We adopt a prescription that implies the stability of the vacuum at the price of introducing a massive spin-two ghost…
In the context of Lorentz-invariant massive gravity we show that classical solutions around heavy sources are plagued by ghost instabilities. The ghost shows up in the effective field theory at huge distances from the source, much bigger…
We consider the classical linear stability of a static universe filled with a non-interacting mixture of isotropic radiation and a ghost scalar field. Unlike the conventional Einstein static model, this cosmology is stable against…
We suggest and briefly review a new sort of superrenormalizable models of higher derivative quantum gravity. The higher derivative terms in the action can be introduced in such a way that all the unphysical massive states have complex…
We argue that all homogeneous and isotropic solutions in nonlinear massive gravity are unstable. For this purpose, we study the propagating modes on a Bianchi type--I manifold. We analyze their kinetic terms and dispersion relations as the…
Complex mass poles, or ghost poles, are present in the Hartree-Fock solution of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the nucleon propagator in renormalizable models with Yukawa-type meson-nucleon couplings, as shown many years ago by Brown,…
We investigate the classical stability of two coupled scalar fields with opposite-sign kinetic terms evolving in 1+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime. In the first part, we characterise unquenched ghostly interactions and present numerical…
Perturbation theory for gravity in dimensions greater than two requires higher derivatives in the free action. Higher derivatives seem to lead to ghosts, states with negative norm. We consider a fourth order scalar field theory and show…
A tachyon is considered to be sick in the context of particle mechanics, but in field theory just indicates instability of a background. We consider a similar possibility that a ghost in field theory might be just an indication of…
We investigate the problems of ghosts and stability in the framework of asymptotical safe theory of gravity in the Minkowski background. Within one loop corrections, we obtain explicitly the constraints on the coupling parameters. Applying…
Massive vector fields feature in several areas of particle physics, e.g., as carriers of weak interactions, dark matter candidates, or as an effective description of photons in a plasma. Here we investigate vector fields with…
The Standard Model Higgs potential becomes unstable at large field values. After clarifying the issue of gauge dependence of the effective potential, we study the cosmological evolution of the Higgs field in presence of this instability…
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…