Degrees of Freedom of Arbitrarily Higher-Derivative Field Theories

Abstract

As an example of what happens with physically relevant theories like effective gravity, we consider the covariant relativistic theory of a scalar field of arbitrarily higher differential order. A procedure based on the Legendre transformation and suitable field redefinitions allows to recast it as a theory of second order with one explicit independent field for each degree of freedom. The physical and ghost fields are then apparent. The full (classical) equivalence of both Higher and Lower Derivative versions is shown. An artifact of the method is the appearance of irrelevant spurious fields which are devoid of any dynamical content.