Translational groups as generators of gauge transformations

We examine the gauge generating nature of the translational subgroup of Wigner's little group for the case of massless tensor gauge theories and show that the gauge transformations generated by the translational group are only a subset of the complete set of gauge transformations. We also show that, just as in the case of topologically massive gauge theories, translational groups act as generators of gauge transformations in gauge theories obtained by extending massive gauge noninvariant theories by a Stueckelberg mechanism. The representations of the translational groups that generate gauge transformations in such Stueckelberg extended theories can be obtained by the method of dimensional descent. We illustrate these results with the examples of Stueckelberg extended first class versions of Proca, Einstein-Pauli-Fierz, and massive Kalb-Ramond theories in 3+1 dimensions. A detailed analysis of the partial gauge generation in massive and massless second rank symmetric gauge theories is provided. The gauge transformations generated by the translational group in two-form gauge theories are shown to explicitly manifest the reducibility of gauge transformations in these theories