Speaker
Description
Effective field theory of composite higher-spin particles is a formidable subject, where preserving the physical number of degrees of freedom in a Lorentz-invariant and parity-even way requires a host of auxiliary fields. They can be chosen to have a rich gauge-symmetry structure, but introducing consistent interactions in such approaches used to be a highly non-trivial task, with Lagrangians usually specified only up to three points. In this talk, I will discuss a new chiral-field description for massive higher-spin particles, which in four spacetime dimensions allows to do away with the unphysical degrees of freedom. This greatly facilitates the introduction of consistent interactions. I will focus on three theories, in which higher-spin matter is coupled to electrodynamics, non-Abelian gauge theory or gravity. These theories are the first toy models for consistently interacting massive higher-spin fields at any multiplicity.
