BRST Analysis of the Supersymmetric Higher Spin Field Models

TL;DR

This paper develops a BRST approach for supersymmetric higher spin models in 4D Minkowski space, simplifying the constraint structure and automatically generating auxiliary components, thereby facilitating the derivation of Lagrangians and supersymmetry transformations.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified BRST framework for supersymmetric higher spin theories that automatically includes auxiliary components and clarifies supersymmetry transformations.

Findings

BRST approach simplifies higher spin supersymmetric models

Automatic generation of auxiliary components in the BRST framework

Derivation of Lagrangian and supersymmetry transformations

Abstract

We develop the BRST approach for all massless integer and half-integer higher spins in 4D Minkowski space, using the two component spinor nota- tion and develop the Lagrangian formulation for supersymmetric higher spin models. It is shown that the problem of second class constraints disappears and the BRST procedure becomes much more simple than in tensorial nota- tion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the BRST procedure automatically provides extra auxiliary components that belong in the set of supersymmetry auxiliary components. Finally, we demonstrate how supersymmetry transfo- rmations are realized in such an approach. As a result, we conclude that the BRST approach to higher spin supersymmetric theories allows to derive both the Lagrangian and the supersymmetry transformations. Although most part of the work is devoted to massless component supersymmetric models, we also discuss generalization for massive component supersymmetric models and for superfield models.