Polyakov, Dimitri

Higher spins and open strings: Quartic interactions

We analyze quartic gauge-invariant interactions of massless higher spin fields by using vertex operators constructed in our previous works and computing their 4-point amplitudes in superstring theory. The kinematic part of the quartic interactions of the higher spins is determined by the matter structure of their vertex operators; the nonlocality of the interactions is the consequence of the specific ghost structure of these operators. We compute explicitly the 4-point amplitude describing the complete gauge-invariant 1-1-3-3 quartic interaction (two massless spin 3 particles interacting with two photons) and comment on more general 1-1-s-s cases, particularly pointing out the structure of 1-1-5-5 coupling.