English

Unitarity of higher derivative spin-3 models

High Energy Physics - Theory 2020-02-19 v1

Abstract

The fourth order in derivatives New Massive Gravity model NMG, describes a massive spin-2 particle in D=2+1D=2+1. At the linearized level a proof of unitarity necessarily implies that the generalization to higher dimensions includes non-unitary massless spin-2 modes. The linearized version of NMG is dual to the Fierz-Pauli model FP. Here we examine the unitarity of higher derivative spin-3 models, analogues to the NMG, dual to the Singh-Hagen model SH. We find that the same kind of restriction on the dimension of the space also happens in this case, and the models are physical only in D=2+1D=2+1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.00648,
  title  = {Unitarity of higher derivative spin-3 models},
  author = {E. L. Mendonça and R. Schimidt Bittencourt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.00648},
  year   = {2020}
}