Complex higher order derivative theories

Abstract

In this work is considered a complex scalar field theory with higher order derivative terms and interactions. A procedure is developed to quantize consistently this system avoiding the presence of negative norm states. In order to achieve this goal the original real scalar high order field theory is extended to a complex space attaching a complex total derivative to the theory. Next, by imposing reality conditions the complex theory is mapped to a pair of interacting real scalar field theories without the presence of higher derivative terms.