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High Energy Physics - Theory, hep-th
Abstract:
We study the cubic vertices for Maxwell-like higher-spins in flat space.
Reducibility of their free spectra implies that a single cubic vertex involving
any three fields subsumes a number of couplings among different particles of
various spins. The resulting vertices do not involve traces of the fields and
in this sense are simpler than their Fronsdal counterparts. We propose an
extension of both the free theory and of its cubic deformation to a more
general class of partially reducible systems, that one can obtain from the
original theory upon imposing trace constraints of various orders. The key to
our results is a version of the Noether procedure allowing to systematically
account for the deformations of the transversality conditions to be imposed on
the gauge parameters at the free level.