Theory and phenomenology of spin-1 chiral particles

Abstract

We consider all possible finite representations of the Lorentz group and their association with the spin properties of the particles. It is shown that, for a given nontrivial spin, there exist several nonequivalent representations differing in chirality, which in the massless case correspond to different particles with different helicities. A spin-1 case, which includes the standard field description by the vector-potential and a non-standard one by the second rank antisymmetric tensor field, is considered in detail. The first field transforms under the real representation (1/2,1/2), while the second one does so under the chiral representations (1,0) and (0,1). By considering spin-1 hadron resonances as an example, it is shown that these two fields describe two different types of particles existing in nature. This idea is further applied to the construction of the Standard Model extension using a new type of spin-1 chiral particles. Its phenomenological consequences are studied in detail.