Gauge invariant Lagrangian construction for massive bosonic mixed symmetry higher spin fields

TL;DR

This paper develops a BRST-based method to construct gauge-invariant Lagrangians for massive mixed symmetry higher spin fields in arbitrary dimensions, avoiding off-shell constraints and including Stuckelberg fields.

Contribution

It introduces a novel BRST approach for formulating gauge-invariant Lagrangians for massive mixed symmetry higher spin fields without off-shell constraints.

Findings

Successfully derives gauge-invariant Lagrangian for rank-2 antisymmetric tensor field

Demonstrates all Poincare group restrictions emerge from equations of motion and gauge invariance

Provides a systematic procedure applicable to arbitrary mixed symmetry higher spin fields

Abstract

We develop the BRST approach to gauge invariant Lagrangian construction for the massive mixed symmetry integer higher spin fields described by the rank-two Young tableaux in arbitrary dimensional Minkowski space. The theory is formulated in terms of auxiliary Fock space. No off-shell constraints on the fields and the gauge parameters are imposed. The approach under consideration automatically leads to a gauge invariant Lagrangian for massive theory with all appropriate Stuckelberg fields. It is shown that all the restrictions defining an irreducible representation of the Poincare group arise from Lagrangian formulation as a consequence of the equations of motion and gauge transformations. As an example of the general procedure, we derive the gauge-invariant Lagrangian for massive rank-2 antisymmetric tensor field containing the complete set of auxiliary fields and gauge parameters.