Related papers: Accelerated expansion and the Goldstone ghost
Ghost condensation has been recently proposed as a mechanism inducing the spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry. Corrections to the Newton potential generated by a static source have been computed: they yield a limit M < 10 MeV on the…
In a recently proposed model of ``ghost condensation'', spatially homogeneous states may mix, via tunneling, with inhomogeneous states which are somewhat similar to bubbles in the theory of false vacuum decay, the corresponding bubble…
Theories that spontaneously break Lorentz invariance also violate diffeomorphism symmetries, implying the existence of extra degrees of freedom and modifications of gravity. In the minimal model (``ghost condensation'') with only a single…
It has been suggested that a scalar field with negative kinetic energy, or ``ghost,'' could be the source of the observed late-time cosmological acceleration. Naively, such theories should be ruled out by the catastrophic quantum…
We review the interpretation of gauge invariance as a mathematical redundancy required in a relativistic description of forces mediated by massless spin-1 and spin-2 particles. In this context we also review the Weinberg-Witten theorem and…
Phantom fields with negative kinetic energy are often plagued by the vacuum quantum instability in the ultraviolet region. We present a Lorentz-violating dark energy model free from this problem and show that the crossing of the…
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…
It is shown that nonlinear terms in equations of gravitons on the background of curved space-time of the expanding Universe can solve the problem of the negative square of the effective mass formally arising in linear approximation for…
In theories with a hidden ghost sector that couples to visible matter through gravity only, empty space can decay into ghosts and ordinary matter by graviton exchange. Perturbatively, such processes can be very slow provided that the…
We construct the effective potential for the ghost condensate <f^{abi}\bar{c}^a c^b> in the maximal Abelian gauge. This condensate is an order parameter for a global continuous symmetry, which is spontaneously broken since a nonvanishing…
Spontaneous violation of Lorentz symmetry by the vacuum condensation of an antisymmetric $2$-tensor is considered. The coset construction for nonlinear realization of spacetime symmetries is employed to build the most general low-energy…
We argue that theories with ghosts may have a long lived vacuum state even if all interactions are Lorentz preserving. In space-time dimension D = 2, we consider the tree level decay rate of the vacuum into ghosts and ordinary particles…
Phantom scalar theories are widely considered in cosmology, but rarely at the quantum level, where they give rise to negative-energy ghost particles. These cause decay of the vacuum into gravitons and photons, violating observational…
We explore the real solutions to the Spherical Collapse Model in a non-flat Universe with a Cosmological Constant, and observe a possible situation for a fake or Ghost Collapse, in which an expanding overdense spherical region, turns around…
The energy in the ghost-free massive gravity theory is calculated via explicitly resolving the initial value constraints for spherically symmetric deformations of flat space. It turns out that the energy is positive in some cases, but in…
A toy model giving rise to long lived super heavy particles and an small vacuum density energy, of the order of the one measured in the present universe, is constructed. This model consists in hidden sector invariant under an $SU(2)_L$…
It is shown that nonlinear terms in equations of gravitons on the background of curved space-time of the expanding Universe can solve the problem of the negative square of the effective mass formally arising in linear approximation for…
We discuss spontaneous supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking mechanisms by means of modulated vacua in four-dimensional ${\cal N} =1$ supersymmetric field theories. The SUSY breaking due to spatially modulated vacua is extended to the cases of…
Many theories of modified gravity with higher order derivatives are usually ignored because of serious problems that appear due to an additional ghost degree of freedom. Most dangerously, it causes an immediate decay of the vacuum. However,…
We revisit ghost dark matter, the possibility that ghost condensation may serve as an alternative to dark matter. In particular, we investigate the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) background evolution and the large-scale structure (LSS) in…