Continuous spin and tensionless strings

A classical action is proposed which upon quantisation yields massless particles belonging to the continuous spin representation of the Poincar\'e group. The string generalisation of the action is identical to the tensionless extrinsic curvature action proposed by Savvidy. We show that the BRST quantisation of the string action gives a critical dimension of 28. The constraints result in a number of degrees of freedom which is the same as the bosonic string.Comment: 13 pages; v2 added references; v3 discussion adde

Continuous spin particles from a string theory

It has been shown that the massless irreducible representations of the Poincar\'e group with continuous spin can be obtained from a classical point particle action which admits a generalization to a conformally invariant string action. The continuous spin string action is quantized in the BRST formalism. We show that the vacuum carries a continuous spin representation of the Poincar\'e group and that the spectrum is ghost-free.Comment: 13 pages, LaTe

Quantum Space-time and Classical Gravity

A method has been recently proposed for defining an arbitrary number of differential calculi over a given noncommutative associative algebra. As an example a version of quantized space-time is considered here. It is found that there is a natural differential calculus using which the space-time is necessarily flat Minkowski space-time. Perturbations of this calculus are shown to give rise to non-trivial gravitational fields.Comment: 21 pages LaTe

Open Supermembranes Coupled to M-Theory Five-Branes

We consider open supermembranes in eleven dimensions in the presence of closed M-Theory five-branes. It has been shown that, in a flat space-time, the world-volume action is kappa invariant and preserves a fraction of the eleven dimensional supersymmetries if the boundaries of the membranes lie on the five-branes. We calculate the reparametrisation anomalies due to the chiral fermions on the boundaries of the membrane and examine their cancellation mechanism. We show that these anomalies cancel with the aid of a classical term in the world-volume action, provided that the tensions of the five-brane and the membrane are related to the eleven dimensional gravitational constant in a way already noticed in M-Theory.Comment: Latex, 14 page

The continuous spin limit of higher spin field equations

We show that the Wigner equations describing the continuous spin representations can be obtained as a limit of massive higher-spin field equations. The limit involves a suitable scaling of the wave function, the mass going to zero and the spin to infinity with their product being fixed. The result allows to transform the Wigner equations to a gauge invariant Fronsdal-like form. We also give the generalisation of the Wigner equations to higher dimensions with fields belonging to arbitrary representations of the massless little group.Comment: 18 pages, JHEP style. Typos corrected, references adde