Classical and quantum ghosts

Abstract

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 energy effective ghosts can exist only at the price of giving up Lorentz-invariance or locality above the cut-off, in which case the cut-off has to be much lower that the energy scales we currently probe in particle colliders. We also comment on the possible role of extra degrees of freedom which break Lorentz-invariance spontaneously.