Unitarity of higher derivative spin-3 models

Abstract

The fourth order in derivatives New Massive Gravity model NMG, describes a massive spin-2 particle in $D=2+1$. At the linearized level a proof of unitarity necessarily implies that the generalization to higher dimensions includes non-unitary massless spin-2 modes. The linearized version of NMG is dual to the Fierz-Pauli model FP. Here we examine the unitarity of higher derivative spin-3 models, analogues to the NMG, dual to the Singh-Hagen model SH. We find that the same kind of restriction on the dimension of the space also happens in this case, and the models are physical only in $D=2+1$.

References in corpus (3)

• Massive Gravity in Three Dimensions
• A new spin-2 self-dual model in $D=2+1$
• Duality of parity doublets of helicity $\pm 2$ in $D=2+1$