Minimal gauge invariant and gauge fixed actions for massive higher-spin fields

Abstract Inspired by the rich structure of covariant string field theory, we propose a minimal gauge invariant action for general massive integer spin n field. The action consists of four totally symmetric tensor fields of order respectively n, n − 1, n − 2 and n − 3, and is invariant under the gauge transformation represented by two also totally symmetric fields of order n − 1 and n − 2. This action exactly has the same gauge structure as for the string field theory and we discuss general covariant gauge fixing procedure using the knowledge of string field theory. We explicitly construct the corresponding gauge fixed action for each of general covariant gauge fixing conditions