A Riccati type PDE for light-front higher helicity vertices

Understand

This paper is based on a curious observation about an equation related to the tracelessness constraints of higher spin gauge fields.

• The equation also occurs in the theory of continuous spin representations of the Poincar\'e group.
• Expressed in an oscillator basis for the higher spin fields, the equation becomes a non-linear partial differential operator of the Riccati type acting on the vertex functions.
• The consequences of the equation for the cubic vertex is investigated in the light-front formulation of higher spin theory.