Comment on ‘‘What is the most general Abelian gauge theory in two spatial dimensions?’’

Abstract

In a recent Letter, Hagen has proposed a vector-field action in three space-time dimensions, and claimed to have found a new massless excitation in a particular limit. We note here that this action is essentially the one given earlier by us to represent the Maxwell-Chern-Simons system: His action differs from ours by an additional term which is inessential and by including an extra parameter which can likewise be rescaled away. The "new" excitation is shown to be just the photon.