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Higher spin fields in curved spacetime

In [26] I studied the problem of constructing the theory of massless higher spin ($s\ge 3/2$) fields on arbitrary curved background spacetime. It is found that a consistent formulation of the theory of higher spin fields on arbitrary curved background requires to give up the locality of the theory. A gauge-invariant action functional for a quantum massless gauge field in arbitrary background is constructed. This functional is nonlocal but turns into the free local action when the background fields vanish. As an application the gauge-invariant covariant nonlocal actions for the spin-vector s=3/2 fields and for the rank 2 tensor s=2 fields in arbitrary curved spacetime are explicitly constructed, which turn into the standard local Rarita-Schwinger and Pauli-Fierz ones in flat spacetime.



Ivan Avramidi
8/7/2001