English

Notes on a Cure for Higher-Spin Acausality

High Energy Physics - Theory 2011-09-08 v2

Abstract

We present a Lagrangian describing a massive charged spin-2 field and a scalar in a constant electromagnetic background, and we provide a consistent description of the system. The Lagrangian, derived from string field theory through a suitable dimensional reduction, propagates the correct number of degrees of freedom within the light cone in any space-time dimension less than 26. We briefly discuss the higher-spin generalization of this construction, that cures the pathologies of a massive charged particle of arbitrary integer spin by introducing only finitely many new massive degrees of freedom.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1103.6027,
  title  = {Notes on a Cure for Higher-Spin Acausality},
  author = {Massimo Porrati and Rakibur Rahman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.6027},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

14 pages, comments and references added, minor reorganization done. To appear in PRD

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:47:18.105Z