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On the Unitarity of Critical Gravity, Other Higher-Derivative Theories, and High Spin Randall-Sundrum Theories.
Mathematical Physics Seminar| Speaker: | Massimo Porrati, New York U., CCPP |
| Location: | 3106 MSB |
| Start time: | Wed, May 23 2012, 5:10PM |
Special limits of theories with higher time derivatives in Anti de Sitter space exhibit interesting features: they realize logarithmic representations of the conformal algebra and they possess a structure akin to gauge theory. These results can be obtained by a simple study of the scalar product of free fields. This study shows that "critical" gravity in dimension larger than 3 is non-unitary, but that the spectrum of certain other higher derivative theories, such as the Flato-Fronsdal singleton dipole theory, contains a unitary subsector. Unitarity of a high spin generalization of the Randall-Sundrum construction will be also discussed.