Superspace formulation of massive half-integer superspin

Abstract

Abstract An explicit form for the Lagrangian of a massive arbitrary half-integer super-spin Y = s + 1/2 supermultiplet is obtained in 4D,$$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 1 superspace. This is accomplished by the introduction of a tower of pairs of auxiliary superfields of increasing rank which are required to vanish on-shell for free theories. In the massless limit almost all auxiliary super- fields decouple except one, which plays the role of compensator as required by the emergent gauge redundancy of the Lagrangian description of the massless theory. The number of off-shell degrees of freedom carried by the theory is $$ \frac{8}{3} $$ 8 3 (s + 1)(4s2 + 11s + 3). For s = 1 our results are in agreement with those obtained in [1].