Universal Limits on Massless High-Spin Particles

TL;DR

This paper proves that in Minkowski space, massless particles interacting with gravity cannot have spins higher than two, extending Weinberg and Witten's theorem to non-gauge-invariant theories.

Contribution

It provides a model-independent proof that massless high-spin particles cannot interact with gravity beyond spin two in flat spacetime.

Findings

Massless particles with spin greater than two cannot couple to gravity in Minkowski space.

The proof extends Weinberg and Witten's theorem to broader classes of theories.

The result constrains possible theories involving massless high-spin particles.

Abstract

We present a model-independent argument showing that massless particles interacting with gravity in a Minkowski background space can have at most spin two. This result is proven by extending a famous theorem due to Weinberg and Witten to theories that do not possess a gauge-invariant stress-energy tensor.