Generalized Symmetries of Massless Free Fields on Minkowski Space

Abstract

A complete and explicit classification of generalized, or local, symmetries of massless free fields of spin $s\ge 1/2$ is carried out. Up to equivalence, these are found to consists of the conformal symmetries and their duals, new chiral symmetries of order $2s$, and their higher-order extensions obtained by Lie differentiation with respect to conformal Killing vectors. In particular, the results yield a complete classification of generalized symmetries of the Dirac-Weyl neutrino equation, Maxwell's equations, and the linearized gravity equations.

This is a contribution to the Proc. of the Seventh International Conference ''Symmetry in Nonlinear Mathematical Physics'' (June 24-30, 2007, Kyiv, Ukraine), published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA/