From Higher Spins to Strings: A Primer

Understand

A contribution to the collection of reviews "Introduction to Higher Spin Theory" edited by S.

• Fredenhagen, this introductory article is a pedagogical account of higher-spin fields and their connections with String Theory.
• We start with the motivations for and a brief historical overview of the subject.
• We discuss the Wigner classifications of unitary irreducible Poincar\'e-modules, write down covariant field equations for totally symmetric massive and massless representations in flat space, and consider their Lagrangian formulation.