English

Causal Propagation of a Charged Spin 3/2 Field in an External Electromagnetic Background

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-08-11 v2

Abstract

We present a Lagrangian for a massive, charged spin 3/2 field in a constant external electromagnetic background, which correctly propagates only physical degrees of freedom inside the light cone. The Velo-Zwanziger acausality and other pathologies such as loss of hyperbolicity or the appearance of unphysical degrees of freedom are avoided by a judicious choice of non-minimal couplings. No additional fields or equations besides the spin 3/2 ones are needed to solve the problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0906.1432,
  title  = {Causal Propagation of a Charged Spin 3/2 Field in an External Electromagnetic Background},
  author = {Massimo Porrati and Rakibur Rahman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0906.1432},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, references added. To appear in PRD