Symplectic realization of two interacting spin-two fields in three dimensions

Abstract

Abstract We constructed a symplectic realization of the dynamic structure of two interacting spin-two fields in three dimensions. A significant simplification refers to the treatment of constraints: instead of performing a Hamiltonian analysis à la Dirac, we worked out a method that only uses properties of the pre-symplectic two-form matrix and its corresponding zero-modes to investigate the nature of constraints and the gauge structure of the theory. For instance, we demonstrate that the contraction of the zero-modes with the potential gradient, yields explicit expressions for the whole set of constraints on the dynamics of the theory, including the symmetrization condition and an explicit relationship between the coupling and cosmological constants. This way, we further identify the necessary conditions for the existence of a unique non-linear candidate for a partially massless theory, using only the expression for the interaction parameters of the model. In the case of gauge structure, the transformation laws for the entire set of dynamical variables are more straightforwardly derived from the structure of the remaining zero-modes; in this sense, the zero-modes must be viewed as the generators of the corresponding gauge transformations. Thereafter, we use an appropriate gauge-fixing procedure, the time gauge, to compute both the quantization brackets and the functional measure on the path integral associated with our model. Finally, we confirm that three-dimensional bi-gravity has two physical degrees of freedom per space point. With the above, we provide a new perspective for a better understanding of the dynamical structure of theories of interacting spin-two fields, which does not require the constraints to be catalogued as first- and second-class ones as in the case of Dirac’s standard method.