Action principles for higher and fractional spin gravities

TL;DR

This paper reviews off-shell formulations of higher-spin gravities in 3D and 4D, introducing new action principles based on Chern-Simons and BF models that unify gauge and matter fields, and relate to topological field theories.

Contribution

It presents novel off-shell action principles for higher-spin systems, including a Chern-Simons superconnection in 4D and unified 3D models incorporating fractional spins and matter fields.

Findings

Introduces a Chern-Simons action for higher-spin superconnections in 4D.

Provides 3D Chern-Simons and BF models unifying higher-spin and fractional-spin fields.

Connects higher-spin models to topological field theory and conjectures a 2D first-quantised description.

Abstract

We review various off-shell formulations for interacting higher-spin systems in dimensions 3 and 4. Associated with higher-spin systems in spacetime dimension 4 is a Chern-Simons action for a superconnection taking its values in a direct product of an infinite-dimensional algebra of oscillators and a Frobenius algebra. A crucial ingredient of the model is that it elevates the rigid closed and central two-form of Vasiliev's theory to a dynamical 2-form and doubles the higher-spin algebra, thereby considerably reducing the number of possible higher spin invariants and giving a nonzero effective functional on-shell. The two action principles we give for higher-spin systems in 3D are based on Chern-Simons and BF models. In the first case, the theory we give unifies higher-spin gauge fields with fractional-spin fields and an internal sector. In particular, Newton's constant is related to the coupling constant of the internal sector. In the second case, the BF action we review gives the fully nonlinear Prokushkin-Vasiliev, bosonic equations for matter-coupled higher spins in 3D. We present the truncation to a single, real matter field relevant in the Gaberdiel-Gopakumar holographic duality. The link between the various actions we present is the fact that they all borrow ingredients from Topological Field Theory. It has bee conjectured that there is an underlying and unifying 2-dimensional first-quantised description of the previous higher-spin models in 3D and 4D, in the form of a Cattaneo-Felder-like topological action containing fermionic fields.