FERMIONS VIA SPINOR-VALUED ONE-FORMS

Abstract

Spinor-valued one-forms (Rarita–Schwinger fields) are normally used in the context of supergravity, where they describe spin 3/2 particles (gravitinos). Indeed, when decomposed into irreducible representations of the Lorentz group such a field contains both a spin 1/2 and a spin 3/2 component, and the Rarita–Schwinger Lagrangian is designed to make only the spin 3/2 propagate. The opposite construction is also known to be possible. We propose and study a new simple spinor-valued one-form field Lagrangian that describes a propagating spin 1/2 particle.