Related papers: Accelerated expansion and the Goldstone ghost
We propose a theoretically consistent modification of gravity in the infrared, which is compatible with all current experimental observations. This is an analog of Higgs mechanism in general relativity, and can be thought of as arising from…
Stable dark matter particles may arise as pseudo-Goldstone bosons from the confinement of dark quarks interacting via a non-Abelian gauge force. Their relic abundance is determined not by annihilations into visible particles but by dark…
Ghosts have been a stumbling block in the development of a UV complete quantum field theory for gravity. We discuss how difficulties associated with ghosts are overcome in the context of 0+1d QFT. Obtaining a probability interpretation is…
We present the theory of a supersymmetric ghost condensate coupled to N=1 supergravity. This is accomplished using a general formalism for constructing locally supersymmetric higher-derivative chiral superfield actions. The theory admits a…
We explore the possibility that theories with negative kinetic energy (ghosts) can be meta-stable up to cosmologically long times. In classical mechanics, ghosts undergo spontaneous lockdown rather than run-away if weakly-coupled and…
In this paper, we discuss the existence of ghost star models in the Einstein-Maxwell framework. In order to explore these objects, we put forward the idea of Zeldovich and Novikov by keeping in mind that the energy density of such models…
Cosmological observations of the recent universe suggest that dark energy equation of state parameter $w$ is growing with time, departing from a cosmological constant for which $w=-1$. Standard quintessence models allow for a varying…
We reconsider the possibility of spontaneous breaking of $R$ parity in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. By a renormalization group analysis we find the parameter space in which a sneutrino gets a vacuum expectation value, leading…
The Higgs boson may decay mainly to an invisible mode characterized by missing energy, instead of the Standard Model channels. This is a generic feature of many models where neutrino masses arise from the spontaneous breaking of ungauged…
A new dark energy model called "ghost dark energy" was recently suggested to explain the observed accelerating expansion of the universe. This model originates from the Veneziano ghost of QCD. The dark energy density is proportional to…
We explore the cosmological implications of an ultra-light pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson. With global spontaneous symmetry breaking scale $f \simeq 10^{18}$ GeV and explicit breaking scale comparable to MSW neutrino masses, $M \sim 10^{-3}$…
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…
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…
A quantum ghost that destabilizes the Schwarzschild solution, transforming it into a naked singularity, may seem like a physicist's worst nightmare. However, we argue that this scenario represents the natural evolution of a black hole…
An effective action of ghost condensate with higher derivatives creates a source of gravity and mimics a dark matter in spiral galaxies. We present a spherically symmetric static solution of Einstein--Hilbert equations with the ghost…
For the Higgs boson mass of $\sim 220$ GeV expected to arise from radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, we find the same lowest-order expressions as would be obtained from conventional electroweak symmetry breaking, given the same Higgs…
We consider models where the dilaton, seen as the pseudo-Goldstone boson of broken scale invariance, plays the role of dark energy. We revisit Weinberg's theorem and show that quantum corrections induced by the graviton lead to the…
The squared mass of a complex scalar field is turned dynamically into negative by its O(2)-invariant coupling to a real field slowly rolling down in a quadratic potential. The emergence of gapless excitations is studied in real time…
The Gleyzes-Langlois-Piazza-Vernizzi (GLPV) theories up to quartic order are the general scheme of scalar-tensor theories allowing the possibility for realizing the tensor propagation speed $c_t$ equivalent to 1 on the isotropic…
We show that cosmological acceleration, Dark Energy (DE) effect is a consequence of the zero rest mass, conformal non-invariance of gravitons, and 1-loop finiteness of quantum gravity (QG). The effect is due to graviton-ghost condensates…