Conservation laws and stability of higher derivative extended Chern-Simons

Abstract: The higher derivative field theories are notorious for the stability problems both at classical and quantum level. Classical instability is connected with unboundedness of the canonical energy, while the unbounded energy spectrum leads to the quantum instability. For a wide class of higher derivative theories, including the extended Chern-Simons, other bounded conserved quantities which provide the stability can exist. The most general gauge invariant extended Chern-Simons theory of arbitrary finite order $n$ admits $(n - 1)$-parameter series of conserved energy-momentum tensors. If the $00$-component of the most general representative of this series is bounded, the theory is stable. The stability condition requires from the free extended Chern-Simons theory to describe the unitary reducible representation of the Poincar\'e group. The unstable theory corresponds to nonunitary representation.