Related papers: Ghosts, Strong Coupling and Accidental Symmetries …
4D Einstein gravity coupled to scalars and abelian gauge fields in its 2-Killing vector reduction is shown to be quasi-renormalizable to all loop orders at the expense of introducing infinitely many essential couplings. The latter can be…
We show that whenever a 4-dimensional theory with N particle species emerges as a consistent low energy description of a 3-brane embedded in an asymptotically-flat (4+d)-dimensional space, the holographic scale of high-dimensional gravity…
We propose two new versions of ghost-free generalized $F(R)$ gravity with Lagrange multiplier constraint. The first version of such theory for a particular degenerate choice of the Lagrange multiplier, corresponds to mimetic $F(R)$ gravity.…
The universe's current acceleration is a pretty recent phenomenon in cosmological time scales. This means that the modes that have left our horizon since the beginning of the contemporary acceleration phase, have not really reached the…
We study the metric perturbations around the de Sitter and Minkowski backgrounds in Conformal Gravity. We confirm the presence of ghosts in both cases. In the de Sitter case, by applying the Maldacena boundary conditions - the Neumann…
We analyse scale invariant quadratic quantum gravity incorporating non-minimal coupling to a multiplet of scalar fields in a gauge theory, with particular emphasis on the consequences for its interpretation resulting from a transformation…
Linearized four-derivative gravity with a general gauge fixing term is considered. By a Legendre transform and a suitable diagonalization procedure it is cast into a second-order equivalent form where the nature of the physical degrees of…
We consider a model where the interaction between dark matter and the Standard Model particles are mediated by a ghost-free bi-gravity portal. The bi-gravity model invokes a massive spin-2 particle coupled to the usual massless graviton as…
It is shown by an explicit calculation that the excitations about the self-accelerating cosmological solution of the Dvali--Gabadaze--Porrati model contain a ghost mode. This raises serious doubts about viability of this solution. Our…
We consider generic derivative corrections to the Einstein gravity and find new classes of theories without ghost around the Minkowski background by means of an extension of the spacetime geometry. We assume the Riemann-Cartan geometry,…
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…
General N=(1,1) dilaton supergravity in two dimensions allows a background independent exact quantization of the geometric part, if these theories are formulated as specific graded Poisson-sigma models. In this work the extension of earlier…
We investigate, in any spacetime dimension >=3, the problem of consistent couplings for a finite collection of massless, spin-2 fields described, in the free limit, by a sum of Pauli-Fierz actions. We show that there is no consistent…
General Relativity (GR) is an effective field theory valid in the infrared regime. Quadratic curvature extensions intended to probe ultraviolet physics generically propagate a massive spin-$2$ ghost and are therefore non-unitary. One route…
We discuss the ghost freeness in the case when we add matter coupled to two metrics to the ghost-free bigravity. In this paper we show that the Boulware-Deser ghost generally revives in the presence of doubly coupled matter and that ghost…
The St\"uckelberg analysis of nonlinear massive gravity in the presence of a general fiducial metric is investigated. We develop a "covariant" formalism for the St\"uckelberg expansion by working with a local inertial frame, through which…
The bimetric variational principle is a subtle reinterpretation of general relativity that assumes the spacetime connection to be generated by an independent metric. Unlike the so called Palatini formalism that promotes the connection into…
The role of Lorentz symmetry in ghost-free massive gravity is studied, emphasizing features emerging in approximately Minkowski spacetime. The static extrema and saddle points of the potential are determined and their Lorentz properties…
We consider higher-order derivative interactions beyond second-order generalized Proca theories that propagate only the three desired polarizations of a massive vector field besides the two tensor polarizations from gravity. These new…
Ghost-free dRGT massive gravity is a subtle theory, even at the classical level. Its viability depends on Vainshtein screening, which is an intrinsically non-linear phenomenon, and thus understanding the full non-linear dynamics of the…