English

Counting ghosts in the "ghost-free" non-local gravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-06-23 v2

Abstract

In the recently proposed non-local theory of quantum gravity one can avoid massive tensor ghosts at the tree level by a special choice of the non-local form factor between the two Ricci tensors. We show that at the quantum level this theory has an infinite amount of massive unphysical states, mostly corresponding to complex poles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.00106,
  title  = {Counting ghosts in the "ghost-free" non-local gravity},
  author = {Ilya L. Shapiro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.00106},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

18 pages, LaTeX. Section 5 discuss relation between renormalization and Newtonian limit and includes a note concerning recent comment on our previous preprint by Biswas et al in arXive:1412.3467. The new version includes many technical explanations added due to the advises of the anonymous referee. Wording is also shortened. Fits the version accepted in Physics Letters B

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:17:32.276Z