Second-Order Fermions and the Standard Model

Abstract

We present a construction of a non-hermitian fermionic Lagrangian which has a second-order kinetic term. Despite the non-hermicity of the latter, the theory is unitary and the perturbation theory that can be derived is equivalent to the usual one derived from a first-order formalism. Having this in mind, the construction of a second-order Standard Model allows a more compact description of the theory. This work is based on [1, 2] and citations therein.

13 pages, 3 figures. Proceedings of the Corfu Summer Institute 2014 "School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity", 3-21 September 2014 Corfu, Greece