Paper detail

HS in flat spacetime. YM-like models

We introduce and analyse a few examples of massless higher spin theories in Minkowski spacetime. They are defined in terms of master fields, i.e. fields defined in the whole phase space. More specifically we introduce the HS YM-like theories in any dimension and HS CS-like ones in any odd dimension, in both Abelian and non-Abelian cases. These theories are invariant under gauge transformations that include ordinary gauge transformations, diffeomorphisms and HS gauge transformations. They are not at first sight invariant under local Lorentz transformations, but we show how this invariance can be recovered.We explicitly write down the actions, the eom's as well as the (infinite many) conservation laws in both HS YM and HS CS cases. Then we focus in particular on the HS YM models, we illustrate their $L_\infty$ structure and perform their BRST quantization. We also introduce HS scalar and fermion master fields and show that the Higgs mechanism can be realized also in the case of HS YM theories. Next we start the discussion of the perturbative approach to quantization by means of Feynman diagrams. We show that the dependence on the conjugate momentum can be absorbed in a redefinition of the component fields, the coupling and the coordinates. In such a new frozen momentum framework, we argue that only physical states propagate in physical amplitudes and carry out a sample calculation.