{"paper":{"title":"Superselected ghost theory: real spectrum","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"hep-th","authors_text":"Bob Holdom","submitted_at":"2026-08-06T21:33:11Z","abstract_excerpt":"Quantum field theories with ghosts can be unitary and perturbatively stable, yet the negative-norm states of their conserved indefinite inner product obstruct a probabilistic interpretation. This problem is especially relevant to renormalizable quantum gravity. The focus of this paper is the real-spectrum regime, in which the interacting Hamiltonian has an exact $\\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry $Q$, called exact ghost parity. Its eigenvalue on each energy eigenstate equals the sign of the norm, and it reduces to free ghost parity at zero coupling. Imposing $Q$ as a superselection charge defines a new t"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2608.06605","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2608.06605/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}