A spin-4 analog of 3D massive gravity

A 6th-order, but ghost-free, gauge-invariant action is found for a 4th-rank symmetric tensor potential in a three-dimensional (3D) Minkowski spacetime. It propagates two massive modes of spin 4 that are interchanged by parity, and is thus a spin-4 analog of linearized "new massive gravity". Also found are ghost-free spin-4 analogs of linearized "topologically massive gravity" and "new topologically massive gravity", of 5th- and 8th-order respectively.Comment: 16 pages, v2 : version published in Class. Quant. Gra

An introduction to free higher-spin fields (TOPCITE: 130 citazioni su SPIRES HEP)

In this article we begin by reviewing the (Fang-)Fronsdal construction and the nonlocal geometric equations with unconstrained gauge fields and parameters built by Francia and the senior author from the higher-spin curvatures of de Wit and Freedman. We then turn to the triplet structure of totally symmetric tensors that emerges from free String Field Theory in the \u3b1\u2032 \u2192 0 limit and to its generalization to (A)dS backgrounds, and conclude with a discussion of a simple local compensator form of the field equations that displays the unconstrained gauge symmetry of the non-local equations