A note on the Pais-Uhlenbeck model and its coherent states

Abstract

In some recent papers many quantum aspects of the Pais-Uhlenbeck model were discussed. In particular, several inequivalent hamiltonians have been proposed, with different features, giving rise, at a quantum level, to the fourth-order differential equation of the model. Here we propose two new possible hamiltonians which also produce the same differential equation. In particular our first hamiltonian is self-adjoint and positive. Our second proposal is written in terms of pseudo-bosonic operators. We discuss in details the ground states of these hamiltonians and the (bi-)coherent states of the models.