Degenerate higher derivative theories beyond Horndeski: evading the Ostrogradski instability - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Année : 2016

Degenerate higher derivative theories beyond Horndeski: evading the Ostrogradski instability

Résumé

Theories with higher order time derivatives generically suffer from ghost-like instabilities, known as Ostrogradski instabilities. This fate can be avoided by considering ``degenerate'' Lagrangians, whose kinetic matrix cannot be inverted, thus leading to constraints between canonical variables and a reduced number of physical degrees of freedom. In this work, we derive in a systematic way the degeneracy conditions for scalar-tensor theories that depend quadratically on second order derivatives of a scalar field. We thus obtain a classification of all degenerate theories within this class of scalar-tensor theories. The quartic Horndeski Lagrangian and its extension beyond Horndeski belong to these degenerate cases. We also identify new families of scalar-tensor theories with the property that they are degenerate despite the nondegeneracy of the purely scalar part of their Lagrangian.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
1510.06930.pdf (220.68 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte

Dates et versions

hal-01554319 , version 1 (20-03-2024)

Identifiants

Citer

David Langlois, Karim Noui. Degenerate higher derivative theories beyond Horndeski: evading the Ostrogradski instability. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2016, 02, pp.034. ⟨10.1088/1475-7516/2016/02/034⟩. ⟨hal-01554319⟩
224 Consultations
17 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

More