A Riemannian isometry is a diffeomorphism satisfying . A local isometry is a local diffeomorphism with the same pullback identity; equivalently is an isometric linear isomorphism for every . An isometric immersion into a higher-dimensional manifold does not satisfy this local-diffeomorphism requirement.
Let be the local flow of the generating vector field . The identity differentiates to , where is the Lie derivative of a tensor field. For arbitrary vector fields , metric compatibility and the torsion-free connection give
This proves the Killing equation. Conversely, a smooth Killing field has a local flow, and
Since is the identity, wherever the flow is defined. Its inverse is locally, so the local flow consists of local isometries. Neither direction assumes that is complete.
Put and . These expressions are tensorial in . Take the covariant derivative in direction of the Killing equation, subtracting the terms from differentiating and . It follows that
With the curvature convention of Solution 1, the torsion-free connection also gives
Define . It is skew in by skew-adjointness of the Riemann curvature tensor. The first Bianchi identity gives
so has the same antisymmetrization in as . Consequently is symmetric in its first two slots and skew in its last two. These symmetries force it to vanish:
We have proved the second covariant derivative of a Killing vector identity, including its sign:
The printed identity uses the opposite curvature-sign convention in Killing derivative identities. If , namely , the same result reads , exactly as printed. The convention must change with the sign; under , writing would be incorrect.
Finally let have zero value and zero first covariant derivative at . Along any geodesic issuing from , the identity just proved says
Thus is a Jacobi field with zero initial value and derivative. Uniqueness for this linear ordinary differential equation implies on each such geodesic, hence on a convex normal neighborhood of . Consider the set of points where both and vanish. It is closed by continuity and open by this same local argument; on the resulting neighborhood vanishes identically, so its derivative does too. It is nonempty, and is connected, therefore it is all of . This proves everywhere and the general statement that a Killing field is determined by its value and first covariant derivative.
A symplectic capacity assigns to symplectic manifolds in a fixed dimension, is monotone under symplectic embeddings, satisfies for , and is nontrivial in the sense that
The second domain is the standard symplectic cylinder. A normalized symplectic capacity assigns to both unit domains, hence to both radius- domains. The general axioms already give invariance under symplectomorphisms and quadratic scaling under coordinate dilation. For the rigidity argument, use the assumed existence of capacities in each dimension, including after adding a symplectic plane; normalization is not needed.
Let be symplectomorphisms converging locally uniformly to a smooth diffeomorphism . Work in Darboux charts. For a sufficiently small solid ellipsoid centered at a chosen point and , uniform convergence and degree of a continuous mapping give, for large ,
For the second inclusion, is uniformly close to the identity on the larger ellipsoid. Its boundary stays outside and is homotopic there to the identity, so it has degree one about every point of and must cover . Monotonicity and scaling now give . Letting tend to one proves capacity preservation under uniform limits.
At the chosen point, write . The rescaled maps preserve capacities of ellipsoids and converge uniformly on compact sets to . Applying the same sandwich argument proves that preserves the capacities of all solid ellipsoids; so does .
We prove the required linear capacity rigidity explicitly. Write the standard symplectic form as . Suppose and
Complete to a symplectic basis, and complete , with the appropriately signed , to another symplectic basis. If their basis matrices are , then has first two columns . Hence sends the unit ball into the symplectic cylinder of radius . This matrix differs from by symplectic linear maps, so it preserves capacities of ellipsoids. Its first coordinate pair is multiplied by , with a possible sign, and therefore sends the unit ball into the cylinder of radius . Monotonicity gives
for every , contradicting finiteness of the right-hand unit-cylinder capacity as tends to infinity. For a normalized capacity, the first iterate already gives the contradiction.
A zero pairing is handled by a small perturbation of . A pairing of absolute value greater than one gives the same contradiction for , after normalizing the transformed pair. Thus
for every pair. The squared bilinear forms agree, so their difference times their sum is the zero polynomial. The real polynomial ring is an integral domain; consequently one factor vanishes identically. Therefore is either symplectic or anti-symplectic.
To eliminate the negative sign, repeat the argument for , which are symplectomorphisms for . If at the chosen point, the limit pulls this product form back to , which is neither the product form nor its negative. This contradicts the preceding derivative classification. Thus everywhere. We have proved the Eliashberg–Gromov rigidity theorem: the symplectomorphism group is closed in the topology on diffeomorphisms.
Finally put , with perpendicularity taken for the standard Euclidean inner product. Its dimension is two, so being nonisotropic means that the restricted symplectic form is nondegenerate. For the standard compatible complex structure , . If , then and for every , forcing . Thus is a symplectic subspace and admits a symplectic basis extended to the whole space.
In the resulting linear symplectic coordinates, is . The projection of the bounded set to the plane is bounded, so lies in a symplectic cylinder of some finite radius . As is nonempty and open, it contains a ball of some radius , which is also contained in . Monotonicity and scaling give
as in capacity of a bounded set thickened by a symplectic subspace. For a normalized symplectic capacity, the two bounds simplify to and .
In the cohomology basis supplied by the projective lines in the summands, the intersection form is
For each permutation , the linear map preserves this pairing. Distinct permutations induce distinct maps, and their compositions agree with permutation composition. Hence the permutation matrices give a subgroup of the isometry group of .
To realize these isometries smoothly, describe as a punctured with punctured copies of attached to its boundary spheres. An orientation-preserving ambient isotopy of can interchange any two chosen disjoint attachment balls while carrying their parametrizations along with them: move their centers along disjoint arcs and extend the motion to small balls. There is room to make these arcs disjoint in dimension four. Extend the endpoint diffeomorphism across the two exchanged punctured copies using the chosen identifications of those identical oriented summands; use the identity on the remaining copies. Collar coordinates make the maps fit smoothly along the gluing spheres. This exchanges the two line classes without changing their signs. Since transpositions generate , composing these diffeomorphisms realizes each element of . Pullback permutes the cohomology basis by the inverse permutation, which still realizes the same subgroup and all its elements. These are permutation diffeomorphisms of identical connected summands.
A vierbein is a local orthonormal coframe, consisting of four linearly independent covectors such that
Here label spacetime coordinates, while label a Lorentz frame with . Its inverse obeys and . The vierbein converts tensor indices between the coordinate and orthonormal descriptions.
The metric is unchanged under an arbitrary local Lorentz transformation , since . This is local frame redundancy, with corresponding transformations of fields and connections; it is distinct from coordinate diffeomorphism covariance. A generic curved spacetime does not have global Lorentz isometries. Rather, local tangent frames have Lorentz freedom, and the field equations can be written covariantly under their changes. On flat spacetime, global Lorentz transformations are also spacetime isometries.
A spinor field is a section of the spinor bundle associated to a spin structure. Local components transform in a Spinor representation of the Lorentz group, more precisely a representation of its spin double cover. For the proper orthochronous group in four dimensions, that cover is . Thus a spinor field transforms as under frame changes, rather than as a coordinate-index tensor. The double-valued lift of a frame rotation requires a consistent spin structure globally; local spinor calculations alone do not choose that global structure. One can use a Dirac spinor for the gamma-matrix calculation below.
Write for the Lorentz-frame spin connection. Expanding the tetrad postulate gives
Multiply by the inverse vierbein to solve for the connection:
With the torsion-free Levi-Civita connection, metric compatibility makes antisymmetric in . For constant flat gamma matrices obeying , define . The spinor covariant derivative is
Under a local Lorentz transformation, the matrix connection acquires the inhomogeneous term needed to make transform as a spinor. The derivative of the vierbein in the boxed formula is therefore essential.
For the conformally flat metric, choose and . Let and raise these coordinate indices temporarily with the flat metric . Directly evaluating the Christoffel symbols gives
Since , the connection formula yields
This is the spin connection of a conformally flat metric in the specified conformal frame. It is frame dependent, unlike an invariant curvature tensor.
Set . Antisymmetry of makes its action on spinors
For with , we have . The Clifford algebra gives , so
The curved gamma matrices are and . Consequently
Thus the rescaled field is a twistor spinor. Multiplying this last equation by , symmetrizing in and using proves
This is the conformal rescaling of a parallel spinor to a twistor spinor. It does not claim that the rescaled spinor remains parallel in the conformal metric; the nonzero connection and the derivative of combine precisely into its gamma-trace part.
A principal bundle with structure group has a smooth free right -action, each fibre is a single orbit, and it is locally equivariantly isomorphic to . A representation defines the associated vector bundle
Local sections of identify with , and changes of section act by on the fibre coordinates.
A principal bundle is trivial if and only if it has a global smooth section. Given , the map is an equivariant isomorphism : freeness and transitivity give its unique inverse on each fibre, and local trivializations make that inverse smooth. Conversely a product bundle has section . This proves principal bundle trivialization by a global section. A contractible paracompact base is a sufficient condition for triviality of such a bundle; local sections alone are insufficient on a general base.
A manifold is parallelizable when its tangent bundle is trivial, equivalently when it possesses a global smooth frame. The circle is an example, with its nowhere-vanishing unit tangent field. The sphere is another: regard it as the unit quaternions. At a unit quaternion , the three tangent vectors are independent and smoothly depend on . Quaternion multiplication preserves the norm, so these form an orthonormal frame. This gives the quaternionic left-invariant frame on the three-sphere.
For any Lie group of dimension , choose a basis of . Left translations define
These fields are smooth; at every , the differential of the diffeomorphism is invertible, so they are a basis of . Hence every Lie group manifold is parallelizable, as in parallelization of a Lie group by left translations.
For a real semisimple Lie group, let be the Killing form. It is nondegenerate and invariant under the adjoint action. Left translating gives a bi-invariant pseudo-Riemannian metric. For left-invariant fields, the Koszul formula reduces to
Thus . The curvature convention of Question 1 gives
To obtain the Ricci tensor, trace the linear map . Since ,
This proves the Killing-form Einstein metric construction for every real semisimple group. If is compact semisimple, is positive definite and its Ricci tensor is , giving a Riemannian Einstein metric. For a noncompact semisimple group the general Killing-form construction is indefinite. Thus the unrestricted assertion is understood in the pseudo-Riemannian sense appropriate here; positive definiteness is not obtained by simply taking in the noncompact case.
The manifold inverse function theorem states: if is smooth and is an isomorphism, there are open neighborhoods of and of such that is a diffeomorphism. In particular the manifolds have the same dimension at those points.
Choose charts around and around , shrinking the source chart so its image under lies in the target chart. The coordinate map has derivative , an invertible matrix. Apply the permitted Euclidean inverse function theorem to obtain open coordinate neighborhoods on which and are smooth. Pull them back through the charts. The resulting inverse is , smooth by composition. This proves the manifold statement.
For sufficiently small, let be the geodesic with and . Define . Geodesic uniqueness and rescaling give , so
Thus its derivative at zero is the identity, an isomorphism. Assuming the stated smoothness, the inverse function theorem proves is a diffeomorphism between neighbourhoods of zero and .
If the Gauss map is a diffeomorphism onto , the surface is compact and is invertible everywhere. Its Gaussian curvature is continuous and nowhere zero, so has constant sign on the connected surface. To determine that sign, maximize a height function . At a maximum, is parallel to the normal and the Hessian of the height function is semidefinite. Thus the second fundamental form is semidefinite, up to a sign. Its determinant is nonnegative and cannot be zero because is invertible. Hence at that point and therefore everywhere.
The converse is false under the stated hypotheses. An open hemisphere of the unit sphere is a connected oriented surface with , but its outward Gauss map has only that hemisphere as its image, and is not a diffeomorphism onto all of . The missing compactness hypothesis matters.
For a coordinate chart and either orientation sheet over , take the chart on that sheet. On a nonempty overlap, its transition to is exactly , restricted to the open agreement set from part (a). It is smooth with smooth inverse. These charts therefore define a smooth structure for which is locally a diffeomorphism.
The topology is Hausdorff: points with distinct base points are separated by inverse images of disjoint base neighborhoods; two points over the same base point are separated by the two disjoint sheets over one coordinate neighborhood. A countable coordinate cover of gives a countable collection of two-sheeted charts, whose Euclidean chart bases show second countability. Thus the cover is a genuine smooth manifold, not just a collection of compatible charts. The construction using all base charts makes the smooth structure independent of the chosen atlas. It also makes a diffeomorphism for every oriented open , since it is a bijective local diffeomorphism.
At , the derivative is a linear isomorphism. Define the orientation of to be the one mapped to . On it is represented by . Where two sheets overlap, their base orientation forms differ by a positive function, so their pullbacks determine the same orientation. This proves the canonical orientation of the cover:
The deck involution reverses this canonical orientation of the orientation double cover. No global orientation of the base was used.
A connected smooth manifold is path connected because it is locally path connected. Each connected component of the orientation double cover is itself path connected. Choose a point of over . For any , lift a path from to starting at that chosen point, using the path lifting theorem. The lifted path lies in and ends above . Therefore every component maps onto .
Fix one fibre, containing exactly two points. Every component meets that fibre, and distinct components meet disjoint subsets of it, so there are at most two connected components.
If is orientable, a global continuous choice of tangent-space orientation gives two disjoint sheets
They are open: on a sufficiently small oriented coordinate neighborhood the global choice agrees consistently with one of the two local sheets. Each projects homeomorphically to the connected base, so these are precisely two connected components.
Conversely suppose the cover is disconnected. It has exactly two components . Both project onto the base and each fibre contains only two points, so each component meets every fibre exactly once. The restriction is consequently a bijective local diffeomorphism, hence a global diffeomorphism. Transporting the canonical orientation of through this map or, equivalently, using its smooth inverse section, gives a global orientation of . Thus the connectedness criterion for the orientation double cover is
Let , and use the complex orientation. Write for the real Riemannian metric underlying the Hermitian metric. Its fundamental form of a Hermitian manifold is
where in this convention. It is real and of type , since . Choose an adapted real orthonormal frame and its dual coframe . Then , giving the Riemannian volume form
We use the complex-linear Hodge star operator, the extension of the real metric star characterized on equal-degree forms by
It maps -forms to -forms and satisfies . It is distinct from the conjugate-linear map . In the adapted coframe the star of is the wedge product of all the other two-dimensional factors, with positive sign. Summing proves the Hodge star of the fundamental Hermitian form formula
This computation uses no closedness assumption on .
Use the integrated Hermitian inner product . The formal adjoints and are defined by and ; compact manifolds here have no boundary. The Hodge Laplacian and Dolbeault Laplacian are
The Dolbeault Hodge decomposition on a compact Hermitian manifold states that
is an orthogonal direct sum, with finite-dimensional . Each Dolbeault cohomology class
has a unique representative in . A form is harmonic exactly when both and vanish, since its Laplacian inner product is the sum of their squared norms.
Now let be the Hermitian Lefschetz operator and let be its pointwise adjoint. For of total degree and of degree , the defining inner products give
The wedge pairing is nondegenerate, so . Apply another star to the degree- form and use that the star and commute with conjugation. This yields
For degrees below two both sides vanish. The argument also identifies its bidegree as and does not require the Kähler condition.
Assume now that , so the metric is a Kähler metric. Start with the supplied Kähler identities relation . Since is real, conjugation gives , hence
The commutators are ordinary commutators because has even degree. Using we obtain, by direct expansion,
Conjugation gives as well. Expanding the two unmixed Laplacians and using gives the same operator:
Finally expand and ; the mixed terms just proved zero disappear. This derives the Kähler Laplacian identity
The Dolbeault Laplacian preserves bidegree. Thus the complex -harmonic forms of total degree split into their harmonic parts. The allowed real Hodge theorem, followed by complexification, gives
The real operator commutes with conjugation, which exchanges and . Therefore . For odd , no summand has , so they pair off in equal dimensions. This proves that all odd Betti numbers are even.
For , the Kähler form power is closed. If it were exact, say , then
by Stokes theorem. But has strictly positive integral on the nonempty compact manifold. Hence the powers of a compact Kähler form have nonzero cohomology classes, and
For an example take the Hopf surface
The dilation action is free and properly discontinuous: on a compact subset the radii are bounded above and away from zero, so only finitely many dilations can meet it. It is holomorphic, giving a complex manifold quotient; the annulus covers the quotient, proving compactness. The map
is a diffeomorphism . The Künneth theorem gives . This violates the necessary odd-degree parity, so this compact complex surface admits no Kähler metric.
For tame or smooth embeddings , ambient isotopy means there is a continuous family , , of homeomorphisms, with and . Equivalently the map is a homeomorphism of preserving the time coordinate. In the smooth category one uses diffeomorphisms and a smooth isotopy. If only unparametrized images are compared, the last condition is ; for oriented knots it must also preserve the strand orientation.
A link is an embedding of a finite disjoint union of circles. Choose a point of outside it and identify the complement of that point with . A generic planar projection gives an immersion with only finitely many transverse double points, no triple points and no singularities of the projected strands. A link diagram is this planar immersed union together with the over/under information at each double point, recording which strand has the larger height. An oriented link diagram also records each component's orientation. The crossing data are indispensable: the planar immersion alone does not specify the link.
Use four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime with and . The Clifford algebra duality identity makes the displayed epsilon-form equation equivalent, up to a nonzero convention-dependent phase, to
This is the Euler-Lagrange equation of the first-order Rarita-Schwinger field action , with the overall phase adjusted to the chosen Majorana convention. Varying the Majorana spinor action accounts for both occurrences of the field and cancels the one-half normalization.
A vector times a spinor contains spin- and unwanted spin- pieces, so the tensor type alone does not establish the physical spin. The field equation has gauge invariance
since the two derivatives contract an antisymmetric pair of gamma indices. Put and . Gamma matrix multiplication gives
Hence . Use the gauge transformation, under which , to impose . The equations then imply
with residual gauge freedom satisfying .
For a plane wave with nonzero momentum satisfying the null condition along the third axis, this residual freedom sets the temporal component to zero. Transversality then removes the longitudinal component, leaving the tensor product of two transverse vector polarizations with the two massless spinor helicities. The possible total helicities are and . The gamma trace is a rotation-covariant map to a spinor, which has only helicities . It therefore vanishes on the aligned combinations and removes the two mixed combinations. Equivalently, the transverse gamma trace condition has rank two on the four remaining complex positive-frequency coefficients. The massless Rarita-Schwinger polarization count is thus
The Majorana spinor reality condition relates negative-frequency coefficients to their conjugates; it does not introduce a separate antiparticle multiplet. A complex vector-spinor would also have independent antiparticle states.
A nonzero standard Rarita-Schwinger field mass term destroys the massless gauge invariance and adds the two longitudinal helicities. To see the constraints explicitly, choose its momentum-space sign so the equation is
Contracting with gives . Its gamma trace then gives . For these imply , and the remaining Dirac equation is . In the rest frame . Three spatial vector components times two positive-energy spinor components give six coefficients, and the gamma trace removes two, leaving the irreducible spin- representation. Therefore
In supergravity a consistent spontaneous mass generation is the super-Higgs mechanism, which supplies those extra states from the goldstino.
The massless graviton also has two physical helicities, so the graviton and gravitino already match on shell. The reason for auxiliary fields is the off-shell component count of minimal supergravity mismatch, not a mismatch of these physical states. After removing gauge functions but before using field equations, a metric has independent bosonic components, while a Majorana vector-spinor has fermionic components. In vierbein language the same bosonic count is , subtracting local Lorentz and diffeomorphism gauges. Old-minimal supergravity adds a complex scalar and a real vector, supplying six real nonpropagating bosonic components. This gives off-shell components and closure without imposing equations of motion. Their algebraic elimination leaves the physical graviton–gravitino spectrum unchanged.
First recover the induced boundary metric from the boundary distance function. If is a smooth boundary curve with and , the local metric expansion of distance gives
One can obtain this expansion in local coordinates from the fact that the metric tends uniformly to its value at ; distances to nearby points have that constant metric's first-order norm. Equality of the two boundary distance functions makes the two quadratic values equal for every boundary-tangent . Polarization therefore recovers the full bilinear induced metric:
This does not yet identify the metrics on normal vectors or mixed tangent-normal pairs.
Let be the inward unit normal for . The boundary normal coordinates
are collar neighborhoods for a common sufficiently small . The Gauss lemma gives with . Hence the local boundary-fixing map already satisfies
because both pulled-back metrics there are .
To justify a global diffeomorphism, rather than assume a local collar map extends, interpolate the positive metrics by , . Their inward unit normals and exponential maps give smoothly varying collars
Compactness of gives a uniform collar size after shrinking . On the image of each collar define the time-dependent vector field
Multiply it by a smooth cutoff which is one for small and zero before the collar's outer edge, and extend it by zero to the rest of . This gives a smooth global time-dependent vector field. It vanishes on the boundary, because for all . Its flow exists for the full interval and fixes the boundary. For sufficiently small fixed , the curve solves this flow equation, so uniqueness gives
Here and . Thus the final map agrees with the local map from the collar to the collar near the boundary. In particular fixes tangential vectors and sends to there. Since the tangent-normal splittings are orthogonal and the normals have unit length,
The construction only needs equality of the induced boundary metrics; the equal-distance hypothesis supplies that equality.
A smooth vector field on a smooth manifold is a smooth section of its tangent bundle. It acts on smooth functions by . In a manifold chart, . The Lie bracket of vector fields is the commutator of their actions on functions:
Expanding in coordinates makes all second derivatives cancel and gives
Thus the commutator is again a smooth vector field, not a second-order operator. The coordinate expression represents the intrinsic derivation on functions, so agrees on overlaps.
For a diffeomorphism , its pushforward of a vector field is
For every smooth function on , the chain rule gives . Applying this twice yields
Smooth functions determine a tangent vector, and is surjective, so
On a Lie group, a left-invariant vector field satisfies for every left translation . Given , set
This field is smooth by smoothness of multiplication. The equality proves left invariance. Conversely, left invariance forces , so is the unique left-invariant field with value at . This is a linear isomorphism between and the space of left-invariant vector fields.
The pushforward identity applied to shows that is again left invariant. Consequently
defines a Lie bracket on . Bilinearity and antisymmetry follow from the operator commutator. Its Jacobi identity follows by expanding the three nested commutators: the six triple compositions cancel in pairs. These properties transfer through the linear isomorphism, making the Lie algebra of .
For the general linear group , use matrix-entry coordinates . It is an open subset of , so every tangent space is naturally . Since , its differential sends to , and hence
For ,
and reversing gives . Thus ; evaluating at the identity gives the matrix commutator
Here “bumpy” means a nowhere locally homogeneous metric, not the different convention concerning nondegenerate closed geodesics. A smooth Riemannian metric has this property if every local isometry between connected open subsets is the identity on its domain; in particular, no two distinct open subsets are isometric. The Sunada local isometry lemma states that, on a compact smooth manifold without boundary of dimension at least two, such Riemannian metrics form a residual set and are dense in the topology. The dimension restriction matters: in dimension one, arclength coordinates always give nontrivial local isometries.
An element of the jet bundle of maps records the source point , target value and all derivatives through order . If and , there are derivative multi-indices of order , and components for each one. Thus
For the projection onto , the fiber has dimension . In source and target coordinates its Taylor coefficients identify it with
This is a coordinate-dependent identification for , since a change of coordinates mixes different derivative orders. For the fiber is canonically ; for higher orders, truncation to the previous jet bundle of maps is an affine bundle modeled on . For the fiber is a point.
The density assertion in the printed question requires distinct closed domains. Literally, for , the identity is an isometry for every Riemannian metric, so is the whole metric space and its complement is empty. Merely indexing the same closed ball twice has the same defect. The intended assertion is for distinct embedded closed balls and , with an isometry meaning an onto diffeomorphism preserving the metric. The proof below establishes precisely this corrected assertion.
Distinct embedded closed balls are regular closed sets, so at least one of and contains a nonempty open set. Indeed, if both were empty, taking closures would give both inclusions and hence equality. Interchange the labels if necessary and choose a nonzero nonnegative smooth bump function supported in . For any given Riemannian metric , make the localized volume perturbation
The Riemannian volume form satisfies . Therefore
If the original volumes agree, every sufficiently small makes them unequal. If they already disagree, continuity preserves that inequality for sufficiently small . An onto isometry must preserve volume, so each of these perturbed Riemannian metrics belongs to . Finally in : all derivatives of tend to zero uniformly on compact sets. This proves density of for distinct closed balls, in fact in every positive dimension. The localized volume perturbation settles this particular density claim directly. It also does not imply the stronger Sunada local isometry lemma by itself, since a general local isometry need not send one preselected basis ball onto another.
Use the Clifford algebra and unit-weight antisymmetrization. The duality identity between and three antisymmetrized gamma matrices turns the equation into
The overall nonzero factor in this identity depends on the orientation and convention and does not change its solutions. This Rarita-Schwinger field equation has the gauge symmetry
since . It is the free-field limit of local supersymmetry, so it is suitable for the gravitino.
To check which spin it propagates, put and . Expanding the three gamma matrices using the Clifford algebra gives
in four dimensions. Thus the Euler-Lagrange field equation requires . Under the gauge transformation, ; locally one may choose gamma-trace gauge fixing, , by solving . The Euler-Lagrange field equation then yields
These are the massless Dirac equation, transversality and gamma-trace constraints that remove the lower-spin part of a vector-spinor.
For a more explicit massless Rarita-Schwinger polarization count, take a positive-frequency plane wave with null momentum along the third axis, in signature . Transversality relates its temporal and longitudinal components. Residual gauge transformations with remove both. Write the surviving components as ; their gamma-trace condition reads , hence
The massless Dirac equation leaves two complex positive-frequency amplitudes in . If , , then is proportional to in the transverse vector index. With spatial rotation generators and , the vector has helicity and the Majorana spinor has helicity , giving total helicity . The Majorana spinor condition fixes the negative-frequency coefficients from these amplitudes. Therefore a massless gravitino has spin , with the two physical helicities . A complex vector-spinor would also have independent antiparticle modes.
The requested count is instead the off-shell component count of minimal supergravity, before imposing any Euler-Lagrange field equations. A four-dimensional Majorana spinor has four real components. Its vector index supplies four copies, and local supersymmetry supplies four real gauge functions:
One must not additionally subtract transversality and the massless Dirac equation in this count: those are on shell conditions. The gamma-trace gauge fixing already uses the same four gauge functions subtracted above. For the graviton, a symmetric metric tensor has ten real components, with four diffeomorphism gauge functions. Equivalently, a vierbein has sixteen real components, minus six local Lorentz transformation and four diffeomorphism functions:
The gravitino and graviton each have two propagating states on shell, but their off-shell counts disagree by six.
An auxiliary field has an algebraic Euler-Lagrange field equation and no propagating kinetic term. In old-minimal supergravity, a complex scalar contributes two real bosonic components and a real vector contributes four, so the bosonic count becomes , matching the gravitino. Their supersymmetry transformations also absorb the terms that would otherwise require the propagating Euler-Lagrange field equations to close the local algebra. Thus auxiliary fields allow off-shell supersymmetry closure and matching component counts without adding physical particles. Eliminating them recovers an on shell formulation.