Massive Scattering Amplitudes in Six Dimensions

Abstract

We show that a natural spinor-helicity formalism that can describe massive scattering amplitudes exists in $D=6$ dimensions. This is arranged by having helicity spinors carry an index in the Dirac spinor {\bf 4} of the massive little group, $SO(5) \sim Sp(4)$. In the high energy limit, two separate kinds of massless helicity spinors emerge as required for consistency with arXiv:0902.0981, with indices in the two $SU(2)$'s of the massless little group $SO(4)$. The tensors of ${\bf 4}$ lead to particles with arbitrary spin, and using these and demanding consistent factorization, we can fix $3-$ and $4-$point tree amplitudes of arbitrary masses and spins: we provide examples. We discuss the high energy limit of scattering amplitudes and the Higgs mechanism in this language, and make some preliminary observations about massive BCFW recursion.

37 pages; v2: minor improvements, JHEP version