Causal Propagation of a Charged Spin 3/2 Field in an External Electromagnetic Background

Abstract

We present a Lagrangian for a massive, charged spin 3/2 field in a constant external electromagnetic background, which correctly propagates only physical degrees of freedom inside the light cone. The Velo-Zwanziger acausality and other pathologies such as loss of hyperbolicity or the appearance of unphysical degrees of freedom are avoided by a judicious choice of non-minimal couplings. No additional fields or equations besides the spin 3/2 ones are needed to solve the problem.

10 pages, references added. To appear in PRD

References in corpus (1)

• A Model Independent Ultraviolet Cutoff for Theories with Charged Massive Higher Spin Fields

Cited by in corpus (16)

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