(Non-)unitarity of strictly and partially massless fermions on de Sitter space

Abstract We present the dictionary between the one-particle Hilbert spaces of totally symmetric tensor-spinor fields of spin s = 3/2, 5/2 with any mass parameter on D-dimensional (D ≥ 3) de Sitter space (dS D ) and Unitary Irreducible Representations (UIR’s) of the de Sitter algebra spin(D, 1). Our...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Vasileios A. Letsios
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2023-05-01
Series:Journal of High Energy Physics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2023)015
Description
Summary:Abstract We present the dictionary between the one-particle Hilbert spaces of totally symmetric tensor-spinor fields of spin s = 3/2, 5/2 with any mass parameter on D-dimensional (D ≥ 3) de Sitter space (dS D ) and Unitary Irreducible Representations (UIR’s) of the de Sitter algebra spin(D, 1). Our approach is based on expressing the eigenmodes on global dS D in terms of eigenmodes of the Dirac operator on the (D − 1)-sphere, which provides a natural way to identify the corresponding representations with known UIR’s under the decomposition spin(D, 1) ⊃ spin(D). Remarkably, we find that four- dimensional de Sitter space plays a distinguished role in the case of the gauge-invariant theories. In particular, the strictly massless spin-3/2 field, as well as the strictly and partially massless spin-5/2 fields on dS D , are not unitary unless D = 4.
ISSN:1029-8479