recommendation about higher derivative theory

Question

Are there some textbook or review about following parts of higher derivative lagrangian?

1) How to figure out the degrees of freedom of higher derivative theory?

2) How to analyse the stability of a higher derivative theory? Are there ghosts in this theory?

3) How to do Hamiltonian analysis of higher derivative theory?

4) How to handle a theory with higher derivative and constraints or gauge freedom?

5) How to quantize such a theory? Are there some general procedures like canonical quantization?

I want to know whether this is thoroughly researched? If it is, then recommend some reviews and textbooks about this. I'm curious about this theory.

Comments

Higher derivative theories are notoriously difficult. because of this, and because the physically directly relevant theories are not of this type, they are very little studied, 

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Lagrangians with higher order derivatives can occur in general relativity, string theory, or when taylor expanding potentials or interactions. I would like to see some specific examples discussed here too.
 

Answer 1

Here [Physical Review D 41 (1990), 3720] is a frequently cited paper on the topic. If you type the title into http://scholar.google.com you'll find many citing papers, some of which might perhaps answer some of your other questions (though it looks difficult to sift out the useful ones).