Relations between positivity, localization and degrees of freedom: the Weinberg-Witten theorem and the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity

Abstract

The problem of accounting for the quantum degrees of freedom in passing from massive higher-spin potentials to massless ones and its inverse, the "fattening" of massless tensor potentials of helicity $\pm h$ to their massive $s=|h|$ counterparts, are solved - in a perfectly ghost-free approach - using "string-localized fields". This approach allows to overcome the Weinberg-Witten impediment against the existence of massless $|h|\ge 2$ energy-momentum tensors, and to qualitatively and quantitatively resolve the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity concerning, e.g., very light gravitons, in the limit $m\to 0$.

v3: Final version as to appear in Phys.Lett.B. This is an abridged version of arXiv:1703.04407

References in corpus (5)

• Pauli-Lubanski limit and stress-energy tensor for infinite-spin fields
• Helicity decoupling in the massless limit of massive tensor fields
• How the Higgs potential got its shape
• String-localized free vector and tensor potentials for massive particles with any spin: I. Bosons
• A Hilbert space setting for interacting higher spin fields and the Higgs issue

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Gauss' Law and String-Localized Quantum Field Theory
• Pauli-Lubanski limit and stress-energy tensor for infinite-spin fields
• Helicity decoupling in the massless limit of massive tensor fields
• Infraparticle quantum fields and the formation of photon clouds
• Positivity and causal localizability in higher spin quantum field theories
• String chopping and time-ordered products of linear string-localized quantum fields
• Revisiting the Okubo-Marshak argument
• Renormalization in string-localized field theories: a microlocal analysis
• On string-localized potentials and gauge fields
• The full electroweak interaction: an autonomous account
• Quantum general covariance