English

Massive Higher Spins: Effective Theory and Consistency

High Energy Physics - Theory 2020-01-08 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We construct the effective field theory for a single massive higher-spin particle in flat spacetime. Positivity bounds of the S-matrix force the cutoff of the theory to be well below the naive strong-coupling scale, forbid any potential and make therefore higher-derivative operators important even at low energy. As interesting application, we discuss in detail the massive spin-3 theory and show that an extended Galileon-like symmetry of the longitudinal modes, even with spin, emerges at high energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1903.08664,
  title  = {Massive Higher Spins: Effective Theory and Consistency},
  author = {Brando Bellazzini and Francesco Riva and Javi Serra and Francesco Sgarlata},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.08664},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

22 pages, 2 figures and 2 appendices; v2 improved discussion, extra appendix and references added

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:14:16.881Z