Master higher-spin particle

Abstract

We propose a ‘master’ higher-spin (HS) particle system. The particle model relevant to the unfolded formulation of HS theory, as well as the HS particle model with a bosonic counterpart of supersymmetry, follows from the master model as its two different gauges. Quantization of the master system gives rise to a new form of the massless HS equations in an extended space involving, besides extra spinorial coordinates, a complex scalar one. As solutions to these equations we recover the massless HS multiplet with fields of all integer and half-integer helicities, and obtain new multiplets with a non-zero minimal helicity. The HS multiplets are described by complex wavefunctions which are holomorphic in the scalar coordinate and carry an extra U(1) charge q. The latter fully characterizes the given multiplet by fixing the minimal helicity as q/2. We construct a twistorial formulation of the master system and present the general solution of the associate HS equations through an unconstrained twistor ‘prepotential’.