Pith. sign in

REVIEW 6 cited by

Higher-spin massless S-matrices in four-dimensions

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1311.2938 v2 pith:VCVLCNT3 submitted 2013-11-12 hep-th

Higher-spin massless S-matrices in four-dimensions

classification hep-th
keywords masslessamplitudesstatesconstructedfour-dimensionsfour-particlehigher-spininteract
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

On-shell, analytic S-matrix elements in massless theories are constructed from a finite set of primitive three-point amplitudes, which are fixed by Poincare invariance up to an overall numerical constant. We classify \emph{all} such three-point amplitudes in four-dimensions. Imposing the simplest incarnation of Locality and Unitarity on four-particle amplitudes constructed from these three-particle amplitudes rules out all but an extremely small subset of interactions among higher-spin massless states. Notably, the equivalence principle, and the Weinberg-Witten theorem, are simple corollaries of this principle. Further, no massless states with helicity larger than two may consistently interact with massless gravitons. Chromodynamics, electrodynamics, Yukawa and $\phi^3$-theories are the only marginal and relevant interactions between massless states. Finally, we show that supersymmetry naturally emerges as a consistency condition on four-particle amplitudes involving spin-3/2 states, which must always interact gravitationally.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Positivity in Massive Spin-3/2 EFTs and the Planck-Suppressed Neighbourhood of Supergravity

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    Massive spin-3/2 EFT contact couplings are constrained by positivity to a Planck-suppressed neighborhood of supergravity values whose volume scales as m^6/M_Pl^6 and vanishes as m approaches zero.

  2. Quantum anomalies from three-point on-shell bootstrap

    hep-th 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    On-shell three-point bootstrap recovers Weyl, chiral, diffeomorphism and Lorentz anomalies up to constant prefactors and reproduces gauge-anomaly cancellation while excluding Pontryagin densities from the Weyl anomaly.

  3. Consistent Scattering Amplitudes, Yang-Mills, the Higgs Mechanism and the EFTs Beyond

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    S-matrix consistency forces the complete gluon amplitude structure and requires Yang-Mills Lie algebra plus Higgs mechanism for unitarised massive vector boson scattering.

  4. Negative running of gravitational positivity

    hep-th 2026-03 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Non-minimal three-point interactions induce negative one-loop running of Wilson coefficients in gravitational EFTs, yet graviton loops generate positive IR contributions that dominate the bounds after smearing if the ...

  5. Positivity in Massive Spin-3/2 EFTs and the Planck-Suppressed Neighbourhood of Supergravity

    hep-th 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Positivity bounds on massive spin-3/2 four-fermion operators restrict the couplings to a bounded region around supergravity values whose volume scales as m^6/M_Pl^6 and vanishes as m approaches zero.

  6. Completeness from Gravitational Scattering

    hep-th 2025-12 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Symmetry plus perturbative gravitational scattering consistency requires the abelian charge lattice to be completely populated by single-particle states for SU(N) with N≥3 and SO(N) with N≥5.