Related papers: Ghost-free 2-form fields in cosmology: implication…
This thesis consists of an introductory text, which is divided into two parts, and six appended research papers. The first part contains a general discussion on conformal and superconformal symmetry in six dimensions, and treats how the…
Theories with curvature squared terms in the action are known to contain ghost modes in general. However, if we regard curvature squared terms as quantum corrections to the original theory, the emergence of ghosts may be simply due to the…
In this manuscript we will present the theoretical framework of the recently proposed infinite derivative theory of gravity with a non-symmetric connection. We will explicitly derive the field equations at the linear level and obtain new…
It was recently found that, when linearised in the absence of matter, 58 cases of the general gravitational theory with quadratic curvature and torsion are (i) free from ghosts and tachyons and (ii) power-counting renormalisable. We inspect…
A light scalar degree of freedom, as the one possibly responsible for the accelerated expansion of the Universe, could leave observable traces in the inspiral gravitational wave signal of binary systems. In order to study these effects, we…
We explore a comprehensive analysis of the formalism governing the gravitational field equations in degenerate higher-order scalar-tensor theories. The propagation of these theories in the vacuum has a maximum of three degrees of freedom…
We classify all the first-order vertices of gravity consistently coupled to a system of 2-form gauge fields by computing the local BRST cohomology H(s|d) in ghost number 0 and form degree n. The consistent deformations are at most linear in…
From higher dimensional theories, e.g. string theory, one expects the presence of non-minimally coupled scalar fields. We review the notion of conformal frames in cosmology and emphasize their physical equivalence, which holds at least at a…
We study the degrees of freedom of the metric in a general class of higher derivative gravity models, which are interesting in the context of quantum gravity as they are (super)renormalizable. First, we linearize the theory for a flat…
Generically, non-linear bimetric theories of gravity suffer from the same Boulware-Deser ghost instability as non-linear theories of massive gravity. However, recently proposed theories of massive gravity have been shown to be ghost-free.…
We study the renormalizable quantum gravity formulated as a perturbed theory from conformal field theory (CFT) on the basis of conformal gravity in four dimensions. The conformal mode in the metric field is managed non-perturbatively…
A class of vector-tensor theories arises naturally in the framework of quadratic gravity in spacetimes with linear vector distortion. Requiring the absence of ghosts for the vector field imposes an interesting condition on the allowed…
We generalize the electromagnetic duality between a massless, canonical scalar field and a 2-form gauge field in 4-dimensional spacetime to scalar-tensor theories. We derive the action of 2-form gauge field that is dual to two kinds of…
We study generalisations of ghost-free bimetric theory which involve more than two spin-2 fields. The consistent interactions can enter in the form of two different couplings and in the majority of this work we concentrate on the simpler…
We present the details of the novel framework for Lagrangian field theories that are Lorentz-invariant and lead to at most second order equations of motion. The use of antisymmetric structure is of crucial importance. The general ghost-free…
We present a class of theories of two dimensional gravity which admits homogeneous and isotropic solutions that are nonsingular and asymptotically approach a FRW matter dominated universe at late times. These models are generalizations of…
We investigate the cosmological perturbations around FLRW solutions to non- linear massive gravity with a new effective coupling to matter proposed recently. Unlike the case with minimal matter coupling, all five degrees of freedom in the…
Theories which contain ghost fields are considered to be invalid. It is assumed that for such theories the energy is unbounded from below, and the theory will be unstable, allowing the creation of particle pairs with arbitrarily large…
We analyze topological string theory on a two dimensional torus, focusing on symmetries in the matter sector. Even before coupling to gravity, the topological torus has an infinite number of point-like physical observables, which give rise…
We consider spatially covariant modified gravity in which the would-be scalar degree of freedom is made non-dynamical and hence there are just two tensorial degrees of freedom, i.e., the same number of dynamical degrees of freedom as in…