Spacetime instability and quantum gravity as low energy effective field theory

Abstract

We discuss spacetime instability for effective field theories of quantum gravity. The effective action of gravity introduces infinite higher derivative curvature terms $R^{2}, { R }_{ \mu \nu }{ R }^{ \mu \nu }, R_{\mu\nu\kappa\lambda} R^{\mu\nu\kappa\lambda}\dots$. Although these higher derivative curvature terms are indispensable to construct the self-consistent renormalizable theory of quantum gravity, they lead to several pathologies. We clearly show that even if they are written as the Planck-suppressed operators they lead to serious consequences and and de Sitter or radiation-dominated Universe is highly unstable. We show that the couplings of these higher derivative curvatures must satisfy $\left|a_{1,2,3}\right|\gtrsim 10^{118}$ to be consistent with the cosmological observations. Thus, the standard effective field theories of quantum gravity fail to describe the observed Universe unless introducing a specific technique dealing with the higher derivative curvature terms.