Related papers: Fourth Order Theories Without Ghosts
Under the same spirit of the Galileon-Horndeski theories and their more modern extensions, the generalized SU(2) Proca theory was built by demanding that its action may be free of the Ostrogradski's instability. Nevertheless, the theory…
Four-dimensional Einstein gravity in the Palatini first order formalism is shown to possess a vector supersymmetry of the same type as found in the topological theories for Yang-Mills fields. A peculiar feature of the gravitational theory,…
The Stark effect in hydrogen and the cubic anharmonic oscillator furnish examples of quantum systems where the perturbation results in a certain ionization probability by tunneling processes. Accordingly, the perturbed ground-state energy…
Starting from a self-dual formulation of gravity, we obtain a noncommutative theory of pure Einstein theory in four dimensions. In order to do that, we use Seiberg-Witten map. It is shown that the noncommutative torsion constraint is solved…
We study the noncommutative \phi^4_4-quantum field theory at the self-duality point. This model is renormalisable to all orders as shown in earlier work of us and does not have a Landau ghost problem. Using the Ward identity of Disertori,…
We derive curvature counterterms in two-dimensional gravity coupled to conformal matter up to infinite order. By construction the higher-order action is equivalent to a finite first-order theory with auxiliary scalar. Due to this…
We construct four-dimensional gravity theories that resolve the Schwarzschild singularity and enable dynamical studies of nonsingular gravitational collapse. The construction employs a class of nonpolynomial curvature invariants that…
In this paper we provide an action related to a certain sector of general relativity where the algebra of Hamiltonian constraints forms a first class system. This action is a Dirac-consistent stand-alone action with two physical degrees of…
We investigate the stability against inhomogeneous perturbations and the appearance of ghost modes in Gauss-Bonnet gravitational theories with a non-minimally coupled scalar field, which can be regarded as either the dilaton or a…
It is proved, that, in order to avoid the ghost mode in bigravity theory, it is sufficient to impose four conditions on the potential of interaction of the two metrics. First, the potential should allow its expression as a function of…
By means of a triple master action we deduce here a linearized version of the "New Massive Gravity" (NMG) in arbitrary dimensions. The theory contains a 4th-order and a 2nd-order term in derivatives. The 4th-order term is invariant under a…
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…
We study the renormalization of some dimension-4, 7 and 10 operators in a class of nonlinear scalar-tensor theories. These theories are invariant under: (a) linear diffeomorphisms which represent an exact symmetry of the full non-linear…
The line of phase transitions, separating the confinement and the Coulomb phases in the four-dimensional pure compact U(1) gauge theory with extended Wilson action, is reconsidered. We present new numerical evidence that a part of this…
We study the critical behaviour of symmetric $\phi^4_4$ theory including irrelevant terms of the form $\phi^{4+2n}/\Lambda_0^{2n}$ in the bare action, where $\Lambda_0$ is the UV cutoff (corresponding e.g. to the inverse lattice spacing for…
Building on earlier work, we discuss a general framework for exploring the cosmological dynamics of Higher Order Theories of Gravity. We show that once the theory of gravity has been specified, the cosmological equations can be written as a…
It is shown that the classical damped harmonic oscillator belongs to the family of fourth-order Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillators. It follows that the solutions to the damped harmonic oscillator equation make the Pais-Uhlenbeck action stationary.…
The Lichnerowicz and Israel theorems are extended to higher order theories of gravity. In particular it is shown that Schwarzschild is the unique spherically symmetric, static, asymptotically flat, black-hole solution, provided the spatial…
With standard Einstein gravity not being renormalizable at the quantum level there is much interest in studying higher-derivative quantum gravity theories. Thus just as a Ricci-scalar-based action produces a propagator that behaves as a…
We apply the principles of discrete time mechanics discussed in earlier papers to the first and second quantised Dirac equation. We use the Schwinger action principle to find the anticommutation relations of the Dirac field and of the…