Antilinear Symmetry and the Ghost Problem in Quantum Field Theory

Abstract

The recognition that the eigenvalues of a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian could all be real if the Hamiltonian had an antilinear symmetry such as $PT$ stimulated new insight into the underlying structure of quantum mechanics. Specifically, it lead to the realization that Hilbert space could be richer than the established Dirac approach of constructing inner products out of ket vectors and their Hermitian conjugate bra vectors. With antilinear symmetry one must instead build inner products out of ket vectors and their antilinear conjugates, and it is these inner products that would be time independent in the non-Hermitian but antilinearly symmetric case even as the standard Dirac inner products would not be. Moreover, and in a sense quite remarkably, antilinear symmetry could address not only the temporal behavior of the inner product but also the issue of its overall sign, with antilinear symmetry being capable of yielding a positive inner product in situations where the standard Dirac inner product is found to have ghostlike negative signature. Antilinear symmetry thus solves the ghost problem in quantum field theory by showing that when a theory has ghost states it is being formulated in the wrong Hilbert space, with antilinear symmetry providing a Hilbert space that is ghost free. Antilinear symmetry does not actually get rid of the ghost states. Rather, it shows that the reasoning that led one to think that ghosts were present in the first place is faulty.