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Living with ghosts in Lorentz invariant theories

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arxiv 1202.1239 v3 pith:EUX4W6VN submitted 2012-02-06 hep-th astro-ph.COgr-qc

classification hep-thastro-ph.COgr-qc
keywords ghostsdecayinteractioninteractionslorentzordinaryratetheories
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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 mediated by non-derivative interactions, showing that this is finite and logarithmically growing in time. For D > 2, the decay rate is divergent unless we assume that the interaction between ordinary matter and the ghost sector is soft in the UV, so that it can be described in terms of non-local form factors rather than point-like vertices. We provide an example of a nonlocal gravitational-strength interaction between the two sectors, which appears to satisfy all observational constraints.

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Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. OpenAlex reports about 25 citations worldwide. Full citation record

  1. Cosmological Instabilities and the Role of Matter Interactions in Dynamical Dark Energy Models

    gr-qc 2019-08 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    For two interacting scalar fields, low-energy ghosts are equivalent to tachyonic instabilities and high-energy ghosts to gradient instabilities, with rare cases where interactions stabilize two ghosts.

  2. Effective Phantom Dark Energy: What Cosmological Reconstruction Does and Does Not Imply

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 3.0 of 10

    Effective phantom dark energy is a background-level reconstruction that does not imply fundamental pathologies such as ghost instabilities or null energy condition violation by the underlying stress tensor.

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