Comment on "Dirac Quantization of Pais-Uhlenbeck Fourth Order Oscillator"

Abstract

The structure of Pais-Uhlenbeck oscillator in the equal-frequency limit has been recently studied by Mannheim and Davidson [Phys.Rev. A71 (2005), 042110]. It appears that taking this limit, as presented in the above paper, is quite subtle and the resulting structure of space of states - involved. In order to clarify the situation we present here the proper way of taking the equal-frequency limit, first under the assumption that the scalar product in the space of states is positive defined. We discuss also the case of indefinite metric space of states. We show that, irrespective of the way the limit is defined, the limiting theory can be hardly viewed as satisfactory.