Living with ghosts in Lorentz invariant theories
- Departament de Física Fonamental i Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona (Spain)
- Institute of Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 (United States)
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.
- OSTI ID:
- 22279628
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 01 Vol. 2013; ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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