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Cosmology Seminar
Canonical Exorcism for Cosmological Ghosts
Alexander Vikman
IoP of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Canonical Exorcism for Cosmological Ghosts
Aug 04, 2016
Synopsis
We discuss time-dependent classical and quantum canonical transformation. In particular, we demonstrated that for the quantum canonical transformations the Hamiltonian is transformed as a connection in non-abelian gauge theories. We explicitly construct such quantum and classical transformations which change the sign the Hamiltonian. Hence one can canonically transform a ghost into a field with the correct standard sign in front of the quadratic action. Therefore the usual naive criteria for the presence or absence of ghost-like vacuum instabilities on time-dependent backgrounds are not well physically motivated and the actual information about instabilities is hidden in the interactions.
http://www.sfu.ca/physics-archive/cosmology/seminars/2016-08-04.html