Constructing massive on-shell contact terms

Abstract

Abstract The purely on-shell approach to effective field theories requires the construction of independent contact terms. Employing the little-group-covariant massive-spinor formalism, we present the first systematic derivation of independent four-point contact terms involving massive scalars, spin-1/2 fermions, and vectors. Independent three-point amplitudes are also listed for massive particles up to spin-3. We make extensive use of the simple relations between massless and massive amplitudes in this formalism. Our general results are specialized to the (broken-phase) particle content of the electroweak sector of the standard model. The (anti)symmetrization among identical particles is then accounted for. This work opens the way for the on-shell computation of massive four-point amplitudes.