Gaugeon formalism for spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger gauge field

Abstract

We apply the BRST symmetric gaugeon formalism to the spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger gauge field. To this time, this formalism has been developed for quantum electrodynamics and the Yang-Mills gauge field. The theory admits a quantum gauge transformation by which we can shift the gauge fixing parameter. The quantum gauge transformation does not change the BRST charge. Thus, the physical Hilbert space is trivially independent of the gauge fixing parameter. By virtue of the BRST symmetry, the physical Hilbert space is still well-defined when we incorporate the interaction with the Ricci flat background gravitational field.