Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability
We show that a massless canonical scalar field minimally coupled to general relativity can become a tachyonic ghost at low energies around a background in which the scalar’s gradient is spacelike. By performing a canonical transformation we demonstrate that this low energy ghost can be recast, at th...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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American Physical Society
2016
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/39500/ |
| _version_ | 1848795851495833600 |
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| author | Gümrükçüoğlu, A. Emir Mukohyama, Shinji Sotiriou, Thomas P. |
| author_facet | Gümrükçüoğlu, A. Emir Mukohyama, Shinji Sotiriou, Thomas P. |
| author_sort | Gümrükçüoğlu, A. Emir |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | We show that a massless canonical scalar field minimally coupled to general relativity can become a tachyonic ghost at low energies around a background in which the scalar’s gradient is spacelike. By performing a canonical transformation we demonstrate that this low energy ghost can be recast, at the level of the action, in a form of a fluid that undergoes a Jeans-like instability affecting only modes with large wavelength. This illustrates that low energy tachyonic ghosts do not lead to a catastrophic quantum vacuum instability, unlike the usual high-energy ghost degrees of freedom. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:38:39Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-39500 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:38:39Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | American Physical Society |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-395002020-05-04T18:04:16Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/39500/ Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability Gümrükçüoğlu, A. Emir Mukohyama, Shinji Sotiriou, Thomas P. We show that a massless canonical scalar field minimally coupled to general relativity can become a tachyonic ghost at low energies around a background in which the scalar’s gradient is spacelike. By performing a canonical transformation we demonstrate that this low energy ghost can be recast, at the level of the action, in a form of a fluid that undergoes a Jeans-like instability affecting only modes with large wavelength. This illustrates that low energy tachyonic ghosts do not lead to a catastrophic quantum vacuum instability, unlike the usual high-energy ghost degrees of freedom. American Physical Society 2016-09-01 Article PeerReviewed Gümrükçüoğlu, A. Emir, Mukohyama, Shinji and Sotiriou, Thomas P. (2016) Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability. Physical Review D, 94 (6). 64001/1-64001/6. ISSN 2470-0029 http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.064001 doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.94.064001 doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.94.064001 |
| spellingShingle | Gümrükçüoğlu, A. Emir Mukohyama, Shinji Sotiriou, Thomas P. Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability |
| title | Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability |
| title_full | Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability |
| title_fullStr | Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability |
| title_full_unstemmed | Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability |
| title_short | Low energy ghosts and the Jeans’ instability |
| title_sort | low energy ghosts and the jeans’ instability |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/39500/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/39500/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/39500/ |