A new formulation of the Yang-Mills theory which allows a manifestly covariant gauge fixing accompanied by a gauge invariant ghost field interaction is proposed. The gauge condition selects a unique representative in the class of gauge equivalent configurations.
The unitarity of a Lorentz-invariance violating QED model with higher-order Myers and Pospelov photons coupled to standard fermions is studied. As expected, we find ghost states associated to the higher-order terms that may lead to the loss of unitarity. An explicit calculation to check perturbative unitarity in the process of electron-positron scattering is performed and it is found to be possible to be preserved.
We complete the set of spin-projector operators for fields up to rank-3 by providing all operators connecting sectors with same spin and parity. In this way we can broaden the search for unitary and non-tachyonic particle propagation in quadratic lagrangian with inter-field mixing. We use the properties of projector algebra to reanalyze known theories and shed light towards new healthy ones. We do so with full control over the gauge constraints by working the form of the saturated propagator in an appropriate frame of reference.
We present the details of the novel framework for Lagrangian field theories that are Lorentz-invariant and lead to at most second order equations of motion. The use of antisymmetric structure is of crucial importance. The general ghost-free Lagrangians are constructed and then translated into the language of differential forms. The ghost-freeness has a geometric nature. A novel duality is proposed which generalizes the Hodge duality in Maxwell's theory. We discuss how the well-established theories are reformulated and propose many new theories.
The role of Lorentz symmetry in ghost-free massive gravity is studied, emphasizing features emerging in approximately Minkowski spacetime. The static extrema and saddle points of the potential are determined and their Lorentz properties identified. Solutions preserving Lorentz invariance and ones breaking four of the six Lorentz generators are constructed. Locally, globally, and absolutely stable Lorentz-invariant extrema are found to exist for certain parameter ranges of the potential. Gravitational waves in the linearized theory are investigated. Deviations of the fiducial metric from the Mi…
We show that the ghost degrees of freedom of Einstein gravity with a Weyl term can be eliminated by a simple mechanism that invokes local Lorentz symmetry breaking. We demonstrate how the mechanism works in a cosmological setting. The presence of the Weyl term forces a redefinition of the quantum vacuum state of the tensor perturbations. As a consequence the amplitude of their spectrum blows up when the Lorentz-violating scale becomes comparable to the Hubble radius. Such a behaviour is in sharp contrast to what happens in standard Weyl gravity where the gravitational ghosts smoothly damp out …
We propose a framework for Lorentz-invariant Lagrangian field theories where Ostrogradsky's scalar ghosts could be absent. A key ingredient is the generalized Kronecker delta. The general Lagrangians are reformulated in the language of differential forms. The absence of higher order equations of motion for the scalar modes stems from the basic fact that every exact form is closed. The well-established Lagrangian theories for spin-0, spin-1, p-form, spin-2 fields have natural formulations in this framework. We also propose novel building blocks for Lagrangian field theories. Some of them are no…
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 exampl…
We analyze the pattern of normal modes in linearized Lorentz-violating massive gravity over the 5-dimensional moduli space of mass terms. Ghost-free theories arise at bifurcation points when the ghosts get out of the spectrum of propagating particles due to vanishing of the coefficient in front of ω^2 in the propagator. Similarly, the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov (DVZ) discontinuities in the Newton law arise at another type of bifurcations, when the coefficient vanishes in front of \vec k^2. When the Lorentz invariance is broken, these two kinds of bifurcations get independent and one can easily f…
From first principles, using a screened expansion, a simple one-loop analytical expression is provided for the ghost propagator of pure SU(3) Yang-Mills theory in a generic linear covariant gauge. At variance with the Landau gauge, the ghost dressing function is suppressed in the infrared and vanishes at $p=0$, as predicted by other approaches in the continuum. However, in the very limited range where lattice data are available no detectable deviation is found from the Landau gauge, thus reconciling some recent lattice data and previous continuum predictions.
The Dyson-Schwinger equation for the ghost-gluon vertex of the Hamiltonian approach to Yang-Mills theory in Coulomb gauge is solved at one-loop level using as input the non-perturbative ghost and gluon propagators previously determined within the variational approach. The obtained ghost-gluon vertex is IR finite but IR enhanced compared to the bare one by 15% to 25%, depending on the kinematical momentum regime.
We prove that the Faddeev-Popov ghost dressing function in the Yang-Mills theory is non-zero and finite in the limit of vanishing momenta and hence the ghost propagator behaves like free in the deep infrared regime, within the Gribov-Zwanziger framework of the $D$-dimensional SU(N) Yang-Mills theory in the Landau gauge for any $D>2$. This result implies that the Kugo-Ojima color confinement criterion is not satisfied in its original form. We point out that the result crucially depends on the explicit form of the non-local horizon term adopted. The original Gribov prediction in the Landau gauge…
Recently, based on the theory of teleparallel gravity, a simple and ghost free parity violating gravity model was proposed in [M. Li, H. Rao, and D. Zhao, J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys. 11 (2020) 023], where the Weitzenböck connection was adopted for simplifying the calculations but breaks the local Lorentz symmetry explicitly. In this paper, we restore the local Lorentz symmetry of this model by giving up the Weitzenböck condition on the spin connection. With full local Lorentz covariance, this model is not a pure tetrad theory any more. We also apply the new version of this model to the univers…
A modifed Faddeev-Popov path integral density for the quantization of Yang-Mills theory in the Feynman gauge is discussed, where contributions of the Faddeev-Popov ghost fields are replaced by multi-point gauge field interactions. An explicit calculation to $O(g^2)$ shows the equivalence of the usual Faddeev-Popov scheme and its modified version.
The gluon and ghost propagators in Euclidean Yang-Mills theory in the maximal Abelian gauge: taking into account the effects of the Gribov copies and of the dimension two condensates
Recently, a class of theories of massive gravity has been shown to be ghost-free. We study the spherically symmetric solutions in the bigravity formulation of such theories. In general, the solutions admit both a Lorentz invariant and a Lorentz breaking asymptotically flat behaviour and also fall in two branches. In the first branch, all solutions can be found analitycally and are Schwarzschild-like, with no modification as is found for other classes of theories. In the second branch, exact solutions are hard to find, and relying on perturbation theory, Yukawa-like modifications of the static …
The S-matrix in quantum Yang-Mills gravity with translation gauge symmetry in flat space-time is investigated. We obtain the generating functional of Green's functions, i.e., the vacuum-to-vacuum amplitude, for Yang-Mills gravity. The unitarity and gauge invariance of the S-matrix in a class of gauge conditions is preserved by massless ghost vector fields.
The dependence of the Landau gauge two point gluon and ghost correlation functions on the lattice spacing and on the physical volume are investigated for pure SU(3) Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions using lattice simulations. We present data from very large lattices up to $128^4$ and for two lattice spacings $0.10$ fm and $0.06$ fm corresponding to volumes of $\sim$ (13 fm)$^4$ and $\sim$ (8 fm)$^4$, respectively. Our results show that, for sufficiently large physical volumes, both propagators have a mild dependence on the lattice volume. On the other hand, the gluon and ghost propagators c…
The aim of these notes is to provide a self-contained review of why it is generically a problem when a solution of a theory possesses ghost fields among the perturbation modes. We define what a ghost field is and we show that its presence is associated to a classical instability whenever the ghost field interacts with standard fields. We then show that the instability is more severe at quantum level, and that perturbative ghosts can exist only in low energy effective theories. However, if we don't consider very ad-hoc choices, compatibility with observational constraints implies that low energ…
The canonical recursive Dyson--Schwinger equations for the three-gluon and ghost-gluon vertices are solved numerically. The employed truncation includes several previously neglected diagrams and includes back-coupling effects. We find an infrared finite ghost-gluon vertex and an infrared diverging three-gluon vertex. We also compare our results with those obtained in previous calculations, where bare vertices were used in the loop diagrams.
We solve the ghost-gluon system of Yang-Mills theory using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Working in Landau gauge, we use the Dyson-Schwinger formalism for the mathematical description as this approach is well-suited to directly benefit from the computing power of the GPUs. With the help of a Chebyshev expansion for the dressing functions and a subsequent appliance of a Newton-Raphson method, the non-linear system of coupled integral equations is linearized. The resulting Newton matrix is generated in parallel using OpenMPI and CUDA(TM). Our results show, that it is possible to cut down the…
We compute the ghost spectral function in Yang-Mills theory by solving the corresponding Dyson-Schwinger equation for a given input gluon spectral function. The results encompass both scaling and decoupling solutions for the gluon propagator input. The resulting ghost spectral function displays a particle peak at vanishing momentum and a negative scattering spectrum, whose infrared and ultraviolet tails are obtained analytically. The ghost dressing function is computed in the entire complex plane, and its salient features are identified and discussed.
We present results for the gluon and ghost propagators and the ghost-gluon vertex obtained from Dyson-Schwinger equations. In the zero temperature case we elaborate on the role of the three-gluon vertex and discuss a model that can capture its qualitative features like its anomalous dimensions and a zero crossing of the dressing function. Our results compare well with lattice data. At non-zero temperature we calculated the ghost propagator which agrees rather well with lattice results already within our simple truncation. These results are used to obtain the temperature dependence of the ghost…
Many theories of modified gravity with higher order derivatives are usually ignored because of serious problems that appear due to an additional ghost degree of freedom. Most dangerously, it causes an immediate decay of the vacuum. However, breaking Lorentz invariance can cure such abominable behavior. By analyzing a model that describes a massive graviton together with a remaining Boulware-Deser ghost mode we show that even ghostly theories of modified gravity can yield models that are viable at both classical and quantum levels and, therefore, they should not generally be ruled out. Furtherm…
We address the issue of the all order multiplicative renormalizability of SU(2) Yang-Mills theories quantized in the maximal Abelian gauge in presence of scalar matter fields. The non-linear character of the maximal Abelian gauge requires the introduction of quartic interaction terms in the Faddeev-Popov ghosts, a well known feature of this gauge. We show that, when scalar matter fields are introduced, a second quartic interaction term between scalar fields and Faddeev-Popov ghosts naturally arises. A BRST invariant action accounting for those quartic interaction terms is identified and proven…
In BRST-quantised Yang-Mills theory the existence of BRST symmetry imposes significant constraints on the analytic structure of the continuum theory. In particular, the presence of this symmetry in the non-perturbative regime implies that any on-shell state with vanishing norm must have an associated partner state with identical mass, but negative inner product. In this work we demonstrate that for quantum chromodynamics (QCD) this constraint gives rise to an interconnection between the ghost and gluon spectra, and in doing so provides a non-trivial test of whether BRST symmetry is realised no…
More on ghost condensation in Yang-Mills theory: BCS versus Overhauser effect and the breakdown of the Nakanishi-Ojima annex SL(2,R) symmetry
We analyze the ghost condensates <f^{abc}c^{b}c^{c}>, <f^{abc} \oc^{b} \oc^{c} > and <f^{abc} \oc^{b} c^{c}> in Yang-Mills theory in the Curci-Ferrari gauge. By combining the local composite operator formalism with the algebraic renormalization technique, we are able to give a simultaneous discussion of <f^{abc}c^{b}c^{c}>, <f^{abc} \oc^{b} \oc^{c} > and <f^{abc} \oc^{b} c^{c}>, which can be seen as playing the role of the BCS, respectively Overhauser effect in ordinary superconductivity. The Curci-Ferrari gauge exhibits a global continuous symmetry generated by the Nakanishi-Ojima (NO) algebr…
We study a non-local ghost-free Lorentz invariant modification of the Maxwell equations in four- and higher-dimensional flat spacetimes. We construct solutions of these equations for stationary charged and magnetized objects and use them to find the field created by such objects moving with the speed of light.
