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Quantum field theory
Feynman diagram
History
Background Field theory Electromagnetism Weak force Strong force Quantum mechanics Special relativity General relativity Gauge theory Yang–Mills theory
Symmetries Symmetry in quantum mechanics C-symmetry P-symmetry T-symmetry Lorentz symmetry Poincaré symmetry Gauge symmetry Explicit symmetry breaking Spontaneous symmetry breaking Noether charge Topological charge
Tools Anomaly Background field method BRST quantization Correlation function Crossing Effective action Effective field theory Expectation value Feynman diagram Lattice field theory LSZ reduction formula Partition function Path Integral Formulation Propagator Quantization Regularization Renormalization Vacuum state Wick's theorem Wightman axioms
Equations Dirac equation Klein–Gordon equation Proca equations Wheeler–DeWitt equation Bargmann–Wigner equations Schwinger-Dyson equation Renormalization group equation
Standard Model Quantum electrodynamics Electroweak interaction Quantum chromodynamics Higgs mechanism
Incomplete theories String theory Supersymmetry Technicolor Theory of everything Quantum gravity
Scientists Adler Anderson Anselm Bargmann Becchi Belavin Bell Berezin Bethe Bjorken Bleuer Bogoliubov Brodsky Brout Buchholz Cachazo Callan Cardy Coleman Connes Dashen DeWitt Dirac Doplicher Dyson Englert Faddeev Fadin Fayet Fermi Feynman Fierz Fock Frampton Fritzsch Fröhlich Fredenhagen Furry Glashow Gell-Mann Glimm Goldstone Gribov Gross Gupta Guralnik Haag Hagen Han Heisenberg Hepp Higgs 't Hooft Iliopoulos Ivanenko Jackiw Jaffe Jona-Lasinio Jordan Jost Källén Kendall Kinoshita Kim Klebanov Kontsevich Kreimer Kuraev Landau Lee Lee Lehmann Leutwyler Lipatov Łopuszański Low Lüders Maiani Majorana Maldacena Matsubara Migdal Mills Møller Naimark Nambu Neveu Nishijima Oehme Oppenheimer Osborn Osterwalder Parisi Pauli Peccei Peskin Plefka Polchinski Polyakov Pomeranchuk Popov Proca Quinn Rouet Rubakov Ruelle Sakurai Salam Schrader Schwarz Schwinger Segal Seiberg Semenoff Shifman Shirkov Skyrme Sommerfield Stora Stueckelberg Sudarshan Symanzik Takahashi Thirring Tomonaga Tyutin Vainshtein Veltman Veneziano Virasoro Ward Weinberg Weisskopf Wentzel Wess Wetterich Weyl Wick Wightman Wigner Wilczek Wilson Witten Yang Yukawa Zamolodchikov Zamolodchikov Zee Zimmermann Zinn-Justin Zuber Zumino
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In the terminology of quantum field theory, a ghost, ghost field, ghost particle, or gauge ghost is an unphysical state in a gauge theory. Ghosts are necessary to keep gauge invariance in theories where the local fields exceed a number of physical degrees of freedom.

If a given theory is self-consistent by the introduction of ghosts, these states are labeled "good". Good ghosts are virtual particles that are introduced for regularization, like Faddeev–Popov ghosts. Otherwise, "bad" ghosts admit undesired non-virtual states in a theory, like Pauli–Villars ghosts that introduce particles with negative kinetic energy.

An example of the need of ghost fields is the photon, which is usually described by a four component vector potential A_μ, even if light has only two allowed polarizations in the vacuum. To remove the unphysical degrees of freedom, it is necessary to enforce some restrictions; one way to do this reduction is to introduce some ghost field in the theory. While it is not always necessary to add ghosts to quantize the electromagnetic field, ghost fields are strictly needed to consistently and rigorously quantize non-Abelian Yang–Mills theory, such as done with BRST quantization.^[1][2]

A field with a negative ghost number (the number of ghosts excitations in the field) is called an anti-ghost.

Faddeev–Popov ghosts are extraneous anticommuting fields which are introduced to maintain the consistency of the path integral formulation. They are named after Ludvig Faddeev and Victor Popov.^[3][4]

Goldstone bosons are sometimes referred to as ghosts, mainly when speaking about the vanishing bosons of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak symmetry through the Higgs mechanism. These good ghosts are artifacts of gauge fixing. The longitudinal polarization components of the W and Z bosons correspond to the Goldstone bosons of the spontaneously broken part of the electroweak symmetry SU(2)⊗U(1), which, however, are not observable. Because this symmetry is gauged, the three would-be Goldstone bosons, or ghosts, are "eaten" by the three gauge bosons (W^± and Z) corresponding to the three broken generators; this gives these three gauge bosons a mass, and the associated necessary third polarization degree of freedom.^[5]

"Bad ghosts" represent another, more general meaning of the word "ghost" in theoretical physics: states of negative norm,^[6] or fields with the wrong sign of the kinetic term, such as Pauli–Villars ghosts, whose existence allows the probabilities to be negative thus violating unitarity.^[7]

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A ghost condensate is a speculative proposal in which a ghost, an excitation of a field with a wrong sign of the kinetic term, acquires a vacuum expectation value. This phenomenon breaks Lorentz invariance spontaneously. Around the new vacuum state, all excitations have a positive norm, and therefore the probabilities are positive definite.

We have a real scalar field φ with the following action

${\displaystyle S=\int d^{4}x\left[aX^{2}-bX\right]}$

where a and b are positive constants and

${\displaystyle X\ {\stackrel {\mathrm {def} }{=}}\ {\frac {1}{2}}\partial ^{\mu }\phi \partial _{\mu }\phi }$

The theories of ghost condensate predict specific non-Gaussianities of the cosmic microwave background. These theories have been proposed by Nima Arkani-Hamed, Markus Luty, and others.^[8]

Unfortunately, this theory allows for superluminal propagation of information in some cases and has no lower bound on its energy. This model doesn't admit a Hamiltonian formulation (the Legendre transform is multi-valued because the momentum function isn't convex) because it is acausal. Quantizing this theory leads to problems.

The Landau pole is sometimes referred as the Landau ghost. Named after Lev Landau, this ghost is an inconsistency in the renormalization procedure in which there is no asymptotic freedom at large energy scales.^[9]

• No-ghost theorem, related to bad ghosts
• BRST quantization, scheme to deal with ghosts
• Quantum scar (sometimes called ghosts)

• Copeland, Ed; Padilla, Antonio (26 October 2011). Haran, Brady (ed.). Ghost Particles (video). Sixty Symbols. University of Nottingham.