The mutual compatibility of the dynamical equations and constraints describing a massive particle of arbitrary spin, though essential for consistency, is generically lost in the presence of interactions. The conventional Lagrangian approach avoids this difficulty, but fails to ensure light-cone propagation and becomes very cumbersome. In this paper, we take an alternative route−the involutive form of the equations and constraints−to guarantee their algebraic consistency. This approach enormously simplifies the search for consistent interactions, now seen as deformations of the involutive system, by keeping manifest the causal propagation of the correct number of degrees of freedom. We consider massive particles of arbitrary integer spin in electromagnetic and gravitational backgrounds to find their possible non-minimal local couplings. Apart from easily reproducing some well-known results, we find restrictions on the backgrounds for consistent propagation of such a particle in isolation. The results can be altered by non-local interactions that may arise from additional massive states in the interacting theory.

We provide a unified treatment of electric-magnetic duality, at the action level and with manifest Lorentz invariance, for massive, massless as well as partially-massless gravitons propagating in maximally symmetric spacetimes of any dimension n > 3 . For massive and massless fields, we complete previous analyses that use parent-action techniques by giving dual descriptions that enable direct counting of physical degrees of freedom in the flat and massless limit. The same treatment is extended to the partiallymassless case, where the duality has been previously discussed in covariant form only at the level of the equations of motion. The nature of the dual graviton is therefore clarified for all values of the mass and of the cosmological constant.

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We study the relation between a given set of equations of motion in configuration space and a Poisson bracket. A Poisson structure is consistent with the equations of motion if the symplectic form satisfy some consistency conditions. When the symplectic structure is commutative these conditions are the Helmholtz integrability equations for the nonrestricted inverse problem of the calculus of variations [8]. We have found the corresponding consistency conditions for the symplectic noncommutative case.

The standard lore in noncommutative physics is the use of first order variational description of a dynamical system to probe the space noncommutativity and its consequences in the dynamics in phase space. As the ultimate goal is to understand the inherent space noncommutativity we propose a variational principle for noncommutative dynamical systems in configuration space, based on results of our previous work [14]. We hope that this variational formulation in configuration space can be of help to elucidate the definition of some global and dynamical properties of classical and quantum noncommutative space.

Starting from N = 4 SYM and using an appropriate Higgs mechanism we reconsider the construction of a scalar field theory non-minimally coupled to a Coulomb potential with a relativistic SO(4) symmetry and check for scalar field consistency conditions. This scalar field theory can also be obtained from a relativistic particle Lagrangian with a proper implementation of the non-minimal coupling. We provide the generalization of the non-relativistic construction of the Runge-Lenz vector to the relativistic case and show explicitly that this new vector generates the SO(4) algebra. Using the power of the SO(4) symmetry, we calculate the relativistic hydrogen atom spectrum. We provide a generalization of the Kustaanheimo-Stiefel transformation to the relativistic case and relate our results with the corresponding relativistic oscillator. Finally, in the light of these results, we reconsider the calculation of the hydrogen atom spectrum from the cusp anomalous dimension given in [2].

Starting from a standard noncommutative gauge theory and using the Seiberg-Witten map we propose a new version of a noncommutative gravity. We use consistent deformation theory starting from a free gauge action and gauging a killing symmetry of the background metric to construct a deformation of the gauge theory that we can relate with gravity. The result of this consistent deformation of the gauge theory is nonpolynomial in A µ . From here we can construct a version of noncommutative gravity that is simpler than previous attempts. Our proposal is consistent and is not plagued with the problems of other approaches like twist symmetries or gauging other groups.

Starting from the dual Lagrangians recently obtained for (partially) massless spin-2 fields in the Stueckelberg formulation, we write the equations of motion for (partially) massless gravitons in (A)dS in the form of twisted-duality relations. In both cases, the latter admit a smooth flat limit. In the massless case, this limit reproduces the gravitational twistedduality relations previously known for Minkowski spacetime. In the partially-massless case, our twisted-duality relations preserve the number of degrees of freedom in the flat limit, in the sense that they split into a decoupled pair of dualities for spin-1 and spin-2 fields. Our results apply to spacetimes of any dimension greater than three. In four dimensions, the twisted-duality relations for partially massless fields that appeared in the literature are recovered by gauging away the Stueckelberg field.