POINT PARTICLE–SYMMETRIC TENSORS INTERACTION AND GENERALIZED GAUGE PRINCIPLE

Abstract

The model of a point particle in the background of external symmetric tensor fields is analyzed from the higher spin theory perspective. It is proposed that the gauge transformations of the infinite collection of symmetric tensor fields may be read off from the covariance properties of the point particle action w.r.t. general canonical transformations. The gauge group turns out to be a semidirect product of all phase space canonical transformations to an Abelian ideal of "hyperWeyl" transformations and includes U(1) and general coordinate symmetries as a subgroup. A general configuration of external fields includes rank-0,1,2 symmetric tensors, so the whole system may be truncated to ordinary particle in Einstein–Maxwell backgrounds by switching off the higher-rank symmetric tensors. When otherwise all the higher rank tensors are switched on, the full gauge group provides a huge gauge symmetry acting on the whole infinite collection of symmetric tensors. We analyze this gauge symmetry and show that the symmetric tensors which couple to the point particle should not be interpreted as Fronsdal gauge fields, but rather as gauge fields of some conformal higher spin theories. It is shown that the Fronsdal fields system possesses twice as many symmetric tensor fields as is contained in the general background of the point particle. Besides, the particle action in general backgrounds is shown to reproduce De Wit–Freedman point particle–symmetric tensors first order interaction suggested many years ago, and extends their result to all orders in interaction, while the generalized equivalence principle completes the first order covariance transformations found in their paper, in all orders.