Selection rules for the decay of a particle into two identical massless particles of any spin

Abstract

The well-known Landau-Yang (LY) theorem on the decay of a neutral particle into two photons is generalized for analyzing the decay of a neutral or charged particle into two identical massless particles of any spin. Selection rules categorized by discrete parity invariance and Bose/Fermi symmetry are worked out in the helicity formulation. The general form of the Lorentz-covariant triple vertices are derived and the corresponding decay helicity amplitudes are explicitly calculated in the Jacob-Wick convention. After checking the consistency of all the analytic results obtained by two complementary approaches, we extract out the key aspects of the generalized LY theorem.