No Arabic abstract
Parity-even cubic vertices of massless bosons of arbitrary spins in three dimensional Minkowski space are classified in the metric-like formulation. As opposed to higher dimensions, there is at most one vertex for any given triple $s_1,s_2,s_3$ in three dimensions. All the vertices with more than three derivatives are of the type $(s,0,0)$, $(s,1,1)$ and $(s,1,0)$ involving scalar and/or Maxwell fields. All other vertices contain two (three) derivatives, when the sum of the spins is even (odd). Minimal coupling to gravity, $(s,s,2)$, has two derivatives and is universal for all spins (equivalence principle holds). Minimal coupling to Maxwell field, $(s,s,1)$, distinguishes spins $sleq 1$ and $sgeq 2$ as it involves one derivative in the former case and three derivatives in the latter case. Some consequences of this classification are discussed.
This work completes the classification of the cubic vertices for arbitrary spin massless bosons in three dimensions started in a previous companion paper by constructing parity-odd vertices. Similarly to the parity-even case, there is a unique parity-odd vertex for any given triple $s_1geq s_2geq s_3geq 2$ of massless bosons if the triangle inequalities are satisfied ($s_1<s_2+s_3$) and none otherwise. These vertices involve two (three) derivatives for odd (even) values of the sum $s_1+s_2+s_3$. A non-trivial relation between parity-even and parity-odd vertices is found. Similarly to the parity-even case, the scalar and Maxwell matter can couple to higher spins through current couplings with higher derivatives. We comment on possible lessons for 2d CFT. We also derive both parity-even and parity-odd vertices with Chern-Simons fields and comment on the analogous classification in two dimensions.
We consider a massless higher spin field theory within the BRST approach and construct a general off-shell cubic vertex corresponding to irreducible higher spin fields of helicities $s_1, s_2, s_3$. Unlike the previous works on cubic vertices, which do not take into account of the trace constraints, we use the complete BRST operator, including the trace constraints that describe an irreducible representation with definite integer helicity. As a result, we generalize the cubic vertex found in [arXiv:1205.3131 [hep-th]] and calculate the new contributions to the vertex, which contain additional terms with a smaller number space-time derivatives of the fields as well as the terms without derivatives.
It is important to obtain (nearly) massless localized modes for the low-energy four-dimensional effective field theory in the brane-world scenario. We propose a mechanism for bosonic zero modes using the field-dependent kinetic function in the classical field theory set-up. As a particularly simple case, we consider a domain wall in five dimensions, and show that massless states for scalar (0-form), vector (1-form), and tensor (2-form) fields appear on a domain wall, which may be called topological because of robustness of their existence (insensitive to continuous deformations of parameters). The spin of localized massless bosons is selected by the shape of the nonlinear kinetic function, analogously to the chirality selection of fermion by the well-known Jackiw-Rebbi mechanism. Several explicitly solvable examples are given. We consider not only (anti)BPS domain walls in non-compact extra dimension but also non-BPS domain walls in compact extra dimension.
We consider the scattering of massless particles coupled to an abelian gauge field in 2n-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Weinbergs soft photon theorem is recast as Ward identities for infinitely many new nontrivial symmetries of the massless QED S-matrix, with one such identity arising for each propagation direction of the soft photon. These symmetries are identified as large gauge transformations with angle-dependent gauge parameters that are constant along the null generators of null infinity. Almost all of the symmetries are spontaneously broken in the standard vacuum and the soft photons are the corresponding Goldstone bosons. Our result establishes a relationship between soft theorems and asymptotic symmetry groups in any even dimension.
We describe a five-dimensional analogue of Wigners operator equation ${mathbb W}_a = lambda P_a$, where ${mathbb W}_a $ is the Pauli-Lubanski vector, $P_a$ the energy-momentum operator, and $lambda$ the helicity of a massless particle. Higher dimensional generalisations are also given.