Quantum massive conformal gravity

Understand

We first find the linear approximation of the second plus fourth order derivative massive conformal gravity action.

• Then we reduce the linearized action to separated second order derivative terms, which allows us to quantize the theory by using the standard first order canonical quantization method.
• It is shown that quantum massive conformal gravity is renormalizable but has ghost states.
• A possible decoupling of these ghost states at high energies is discussed.