Three dimensional half-bosons and topological mass

A new mechanism is proposed for the phenomenon of topological mass generati on in three spacetime dimensions as the result of the soldering of two mass less half-boson modes of opposite signatures. This new interpretation, that extends similar phenomenon producing the massive vectorial mode of the 2D Schwinger model, is here exploited in the generation of the gauge invariant massive mode of the Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. In the process, a new hal f-boson action is proposed for odd dimensional space-times to be used as th e basic building blocks in the interference scheme. This action is the anal og of the two-dimensional Floreanini-Jackiw action to higher dimensional sp aces. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.