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Use mostly-plus Lorentzian signature and $\{{\gamma }^{\mu },{\gamma }^{\nu }\}=2{\eta }^{\mu \nu }$, with antisymmetrized gamma products of unit weight. A Majorana spinor obeys a reality condition under charge conjugation:A Weyl spinor instead has definite chirality,A four-dimensional Majorana spinor has four real components, while a Weyl spinor has two complex components. Charge conjugation reverses chirality in this signature, so a nonzero spinor cannot satisfy both conditions simultaneously.

For the Dirac equation $(/\partial +m)\psi =0$, the derivative term reverses chirality because ${\gamma }_5$ anticommutes with every gamma matrix, whereas the mass term preserves it. Projecting a purely chiral spinor equation onto its two chiralities therefore gives both $/\partial \psi =0$ and $m\psi =0$. Thus a nonzero four-component Weyl spinor satisfying this uncoupled Dirac equation must be massless. A Majorana spinor contains conjugate opposite-chirality components and can have a nonzero mass. Its charge-conjugation reality condition identifies particle and antiparticle operators, so a Majorana particle is its own antiparticle. A Weyl field does not by itself impose that identification.

This does not forbid writing a Majorana mass term for a neutral two-component Weyl field: such a term couples the field to its conjugate, and the resulting four-component massive field is Majorana, not a purely chiral solution of the uncoupled Dirac equation.

For the Rarita-Schwinger field, set $\chi ={\gamma }^{\mu }{\psi }_{\mu }$ and $d={\partial }^{\mu }{\psi }_{\mu }$. The antisymmetric kinetic operator is invariant underbecause commuting derivatives contract to zero against ${\gamma }^{\mu \nu \rho }$. Expanding its gamma product givesGamma contraction gives ${\gamma }_{\mu }{E}^{\mu }=2(/\partial \chi -d)$, so the equation implies $d=/\partial \chi$ and $/\partial {\psi }^{\mu }={\partial }^{\mu }\chi$.

For a Fourier mode with momentum $k$, if $k^2\ne 0$ the latter identity gives $k^2{\psi }^{\mu }=k^{\mu }/k\chi$. The mode is proportional to $k^{\mu }$ and hence pure gauge. Every physical nonzero-momentum mode therefore has $k^2=0$. For a null mode, choose an index with $k^{\mu }\ne 0$. The same equation makes $\chi$ an element of the image of $/k$, allowing a gauge choice with $\chi =0$. The field equations then reduce toResidual gauge transformations obey $/\partial \eta =0$.

Take a null momentum in the third spatial direction. Residual gauge freedom and transversality remove the temporal and longitudinal vector components, leaving two transverse vector polarizations. Their helicities are $\pm 1$, while on-shell spinor helicities are $\pm 1/2$. The gamma-trace constraint removes the two combinations of total helicity $\pm 1/2$ and retains the aligned combinations of helicity $\pm 3/2$. Explicitly, in a chiral representation the transverse gamma contractions use ${\sigma }_1\pm i{\sigma }_2$, which annihilate the correspondingly aligned spin states and act nontrivially on the opposite states. Thus a Majorana Rarita-Schwinger field has two physical massless polarizations. The Majorana assumption is the one relevant to simple supergravity; a complex vector-spinor has these helicities for its particle and independent antiparticle modes.

A consistent free massive deformation is the algebraic termadded to a kinetic term $-\frac{1}{2}{\overline{\psi }}_{\mu }{\gamma }^{\mu \nu \rho }{\partial }_{\nu }{\psi }_{\rho }$. Its equation isFor $m\ne 0$, divergence and gamma contraction give, respectively,These imply the massive Rarita-Schwinger constraints $\chi =0$ and $d=0$, and the remaining equation is $(/\partial +m){\psi }_{\mu }=0$. Squaring gives $(\square -m^2){\psi }_{\mu }=0$ in the chosen signature. The gauge symmetry is lost. In the rest frame, transversality sets the temporal component to zero; three spatial vector components times two on-shell spinor states give six states, and gamma trace removes the two spin-one-half states. The result is four massive spin-$3/2$ states, with spin projections $\pm 3/2,\pm 1/2$. In supergravity the additional longitudinal states can be supplied by the super-Higgs mechanism.