2014/04/02 by Philip Schuster, Schuster, Philip, Natalia Toro +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1404.0675
45 pages
arxiv created 2014/04/02 · openalex publication_date 2014/04/02 · arxiv updated 2014/04/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose the first covariant local action describing the propagation of a single free continuous-spin degree of freedom. The theory is simply formulated as a gauge theory in a "vector superspace", but can also be formulated in terms of a tower of symmetric tensor gauge fields. When the spin invariant ρ vanishes, the helicity correspondence is manifest -- familiar gauge theory actions are recovered and couplings to conserved currents can easily be introduced. For non-zero ρ, a tower of tensor currents must be present, of which only the lowest rank is exactly conserved. A paucity of local gauge-invariant operators for non-zero ρ suggests that the equations of motion in any interacting theory should be covariant, not invariant, under a generalization of the free theory's gauge symmetry.