2025/10/29 by Sauro, Dario
#FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.25709
The unique off-shell fermionic gauge invariance of a vector-spinor field theory is found, and the invariant action is derived. The latter is Weyl invariant in any dimension in the massless limit, and it coincides with the singular point of the one-parameter family of Rarita-Schwinger Lagrangians. Pure gauge configurations are represented by gamma-trace vector-spinors, which can be gauged away in a global way. Previous claims that this theory is inconsistent are shown to be flawed, and the Velo-Zwanziger instability is proved to be absent. The theory propagates a massive spin-3/2 particle together with a spin-1/2 state whose mass is twice that of the j=3/2 mode. This physical prediction is derived in a consistent fashion both from the classical field equations in d=4 and from the causal construction of a gamma-traceless quantum vector-spinor field. The conformal anomaly is derived using known results for the heat kernel of non-minimal second-order operators, and it is shown that the a-anomaly has an opposite sign w.r.t. known results for lower spin fields.