Higher spins, quadratic forms and amplitudes

Abstract

Abstract The light-cone Hamiltonians for spin 1 and spin 2 fields, describing both the pure and the maximally supersymmetric theories, may be expressed as quadratic forms. In this paper, we show that this feature extends to light-cone higher spin theories. To first order in the coupling constant, we prove that the higher spin Hamiltonians, with and without supersymmetry, are quadratic forms. Scattering amplitude structures emerge naturally in this framework and we relate the momentum space vertex in a supersymmetric higher spin theory to the corresponding vertex in the $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 Yang-Mills theory.