Published December 15, 2006 | Version v1
Journal article

Linear connections with a propagating spin-3 field in gravity

  • 1. Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, 50923 Koeln, Germany and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri 65211 (United States)
  • 2. Universite de Mons-Hainaut, Academie Wallonie-Bruxelles, Mecanique et Gravitation, Avenue du Champ de Mars 6, B-7000 Mons (Belgium)
  • 3. Fachbereich Medien, Fachhochschule Duesseldorf, University of Applied Sciences, Josef-Gockeln-Str. 9, 40474 Duesseldorf (Germany)

Description

We show that Fronsdal's Lagrangian for a free massless spin-3 gauge field in Minkowski spacetime is contained in a general Yang-Mills-like Lagrangian of metric-affine gravity (MAG), the gauge theory of the general affine group in the presence of a metric. Because of the geometric character of MAG, this can best be seen by using Vasiliev's frame formalism for higher-spin gauge fields in which the spin-3 frame is identified with the tracefree nonmetricity one-form associated with the shear generators of GL(n,R). Furthermore, for specific gravitational gauge models in the framework of full nonlinear MAG, exact solutions are constructed, featuring propagating massless and massive spin-3 fields

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
74
Journal Issue
12
Journal Page Range
p. 125009-125009.20
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDAQ

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2006 The American Physical Society