30,614 research outputs found
Higher-order Lorentz-invariance violation, quantum gravity and fine-tuning
The issue of Lorentz fine-tuning in effective theories containing
higher-order operators is studied. To this end, we focus on the Myers-Pospelov
extension of QED with dimension-five operators in the photon sector and
standard fermions. We compute the fermion self-energy at one-loop order
considering its even and odd contributions. In the even sector we find
small radiative corrections to the usual parameters of QED which also turn to
be finite. In the odd sector the axial operator is shown to contain
unsuppressed effects of Lorentz violation leading to a possible fine-tuning. We
use dimensional regularization to deal with the divergencies and a generic
preferred four-vector. Taking the first steps in the renormalization procedure
for Lorentz violating theories we arrive to acceptable small corrections
allowing to set the bound .Comment: 11 pages, new version with the correct pole extractio
Unitarity, ghosts and nonminimal terms in Lorentz violating QED
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.Comment: Presented at the Sixth Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry,
Bloomington, Indiana, June 17-21, 201
Polymer quantization, stability and higher-order time derivative terms
The stability of higher-order time derivative theories using the polymer
extension of quantum mechanics is studied. First, we focus on the well-known
Pais-Uhlenbeck model and by casting the theory into the sum of two decoupled
The possibility that fundamental discreteness implicit in a quantum gravity
theory may act as a natural regulator for ultraviolet singularities arising in
quantum field theory has been intensively studied. Here, along the same
expectations, we investigate whether a nonstandard representation, called
polymer representation can smooth away the large amount of negative energy that
afflicts the Hamiltonians of higher-order time derivative theories; rendering
the theory unstable when interactions come into play. We focus on the
fourth-order Pais-Uhlenbeck model which can be reexpressed as the sum of two
decoupled harmonic oscillators one producing positive energy and the other
negative energy. As expected, the Schrodinger quantization of such model leads
to the stability problem or to negative norm states called ghosts. Within the
framework of polymer quantization we show the existence of new regions where
the Hamiltonian can be defined well bounded from below.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
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