English

Helicity Zero Particles

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

In this paper we consider the possibility that a vector particle with mass might exist in only one helicity state, rather than the usual three states with helicity equal to +1, -1, and 0. Massless particles, of course, need only have one helicity state. (For invariance under parity, they need two.) We show that a massive vector particle can exist only in the helicity-0 state, if it is composed of a fermion-antifermion pair and they are massless. This requires the mass to be generated by the interaction between the massless particles. An interaction of the form Psi^dagger i gamma_4 gamma_mu Psi is attractive between particle and antiparticle and preserves helicity. Methods for experimentally distinguishing an helicity-0 vector particle from both a spin-0 pseudoscalar particle and a spin-1 vector particle are discussed.

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0409166,
  title  = {Helicity Zero Particles},
  author = {W. A. Perkins},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0409166},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

LaTex, 11 pages, 2 Postscript (EPS) figures, 16 references