Open AccessBenign ghosts in higher-derivative systems
Author(s) -
Andrei Smilga
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/2038/1/012023
Subject(s) - unitarity , bounded function , hamiltonian (control theory) , brane , theoretical physics , physics , derivative (finance) , mathematical physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , mathematical analysis , mathematical optimization , financial economics , economics
A brief review of the physics of systems including higher derivatives in the Lagrangian is given. All such systems involve ghosts i.e. the spectrum of the Hamiltonian is not bounded from below and the vacuum ground state is absent. Usually this leads to collapse and loss of unitarity. In certain special cases, this does not happen, however: ghosts are benign. This happens, in particular, in exactly solvable higher-derivative theories, but exact solvability seems to be a sufficient but not a necessary condition for the benign nature of the ghosts. We speculate that the Theory of Everything is a higher-derivative field theory, characterized by the presence of such benign ghosts and defined in a higher-dimensional bulk. Our Universe represents then a classical solution in this theory, having the form of a 3-brane embedded in the bulk.