Investigations into Light-front Quartic Interactions for Massless Fields (I): Non-constructibility of Higher Spin Quartic Amplitudes

Abstract

The dynamical commutators of the light-front Poincar\'e algebra yield first order differential equations in the $p^+$ momenta for the interaction vertex operators. The homogeneous solution to the equation for the quartic vertex is studied. Consequences as regards the constructibility assumption of quartic higher spin amplitudes from cubic amplitudes are discussed. The existence of quartic contact interactions unrelated to cubic interactions by Poincar\'e symmetry indicates that the higher spin S-matrix is not constructible. Thus quartic amplitude based no-go results derived by BCFW recursion for Minkowski higher spin massless fields may be circumvented.