Lightlike string-localized free quantum fields for massive bosons

Abstract

The combined requirements of locality, positivity of states and positivity of energy lead to bad short distance behaviour of quantum fields (UV singularities). When one tries to build quantum fields for particles of spin s ≥ 1 that still satisfy these fundamental principles, one ends up with non-renormalizable interactions. For spin one and two, there exist fields in the context of gauge theory with the same good UV behaviour as the scalar field for spin zero. However, for this one has to introduce an unphysical state space, as well as unphysical fields (ghosts). Motivated by previous works, we begin to investigate quantum fields, for massive bosons of any spin, that have the same good UV behaviour as the scalar field (s = 0), act in a Hilbert space without ghosts and are Poincaré covariant. These fields are, however, no longer point-local, being localized instead on semi-infinite lines in Minkowski space extending to lightlike infinity (lightlike strings).