Ghost-free theories with arbitrary higher-order time derivatives

Abstract We construct no-ghost theories of analytic mechanics involving arbitrary higher-order derivatives in Lagrangian. It has been known that for theories involving at most second-order time derivatives in the Lagrangian, eliminating linear dependence of canonical momenta in the Hamiltonian is necessary and sufficient condition to eliminate Ostrogradsky ghost. In the previous work we showed for the specific quadratic model involving third-order derivatives that the condition is necessary but not sufficient, and linear dependence of canonical coordinates corresponding to higher time-derivatives also need to be removed appropriately. In this paper, we generalize the previous analysis and establish how to eliminate all the ghost degrees of freedom for general theories involving arbitrary higher-order derivatives in the Lagrangian. We clarify a set of degeneracy conditions to eliminate all the ghost degrees of freedom, under which we also show that the Euler-Lagrange equations are reducible to a second-order system