Effective action for higher spin fields on (A)dS backgrounds

Understand

We study the one loop effective action for a class of higher spin fields by using a first-quantized description.

• The latter is obtained by considering spinning particles, characterized by an extended local supersymmetry on the worldline, that can propagate consistently on conformally flat spaces.
• The gauge fixing procedure for calculating the worldline path integral on a loop is delicate, as the gauge algebra contains nontrivial structure functions.
• Restricting the analysis on (A)dS backgrounds simplifies the gauge fixing procedure, and allows us to produce a useful representation of the one loop effective action.