For physical finite-spin one-particle states, a positive-energy Poincaré group representation is labelled by mass and spin when , or mass and helicity when massless. The individual states also carry their four-momentum and a spin projection. For four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetry, the irreducible labels become , with the superspin, or , with a chosen superhelicity convention. The constituent representation labels are
with the last entry omitted for , and
A required CPT completion of a supermultiplet adds the conjugate labels and conjugates any internal charges.
In a massive four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetry representation, the two normalized raising supercharges transform as a spin-half doublet. Start with a Clifford vacuum of superspin . At occupation levels zero, one and two, the ordinary spins are
The two-creation state has a spin-singlet oscillator factor because the creation operators anticommute. Thus the massive N=1 vector multiplet contains
There are four bosonic polarizations, , and four fermionic polarizations, , as required by boson-fermion degeneracy in a supermultiplet.
In the massless limit the helicity multiplicities become , two copies each of , and two zero-helicity states. They separate into the four irreducible helicity pairs
With the lower-helicity convention for superhelicity, a pair has labels , respectively. A midpoint convention shifts each label by ; the explicit helicity pairs remove any naming ambiguity.
Pairing under the CPT theorem, the first and last pairs form a massless vector multiplet, and the middle two form a massless chiral multiplet. This is the massless limit of a massive N=1 vector multiplet. The longitudinal vector polarization supplies one of the chiral multiplet's two real scalar modes; the original spin-zero state supplies the other. Simply discarding the longitudinal polarization would lose a physical degree of freedom and give the wrong decomposition.
Positive-energy one-particle Poincaré group representations have labels for , and for finite-helicity massless states; individual massive polarizations add . An massive supermultiplet is labelled by mass and superspin , with constituent labels
A massless supermultiplet has constituent labels
A CPT completion of a supermultiplet additionally supplies , with conjugated internal charges where applicable. Constituent spins/helicities are the labels here, not counts of polarizations.
Superspin 2026-10-14
For a massive four-dimensional N=1 supermultiplet, superspin is the spin of its Clifford vacuum, the state annihilated by the two lowering supercharges. The creation operators produce spins , omitting the last when . The corresponding superspin Casimir has an eigenvalue proportional to ; this representation label is distinct from the spin of any one constituent.