No Arabic abstract
A new scheme of the perturbative analysis of the nonlinear HS equations is developed giving directly the final result for the successive application of the homotopy integrations which appear in the standard approach. It drastically simplifies the analysis and results from the application of the standard spectral sequence approach to the higher-spin covariant derivatives, allowing us in particular to reduce multiple homotopy integrals resulting from the successive application of the homotopy trick to a single integral. Efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated by various examples. In particular, it is shown how the Central on-shell theorem of the free theory immediately results from the nonlinear HS field equations with no intermediate computations.
In this paper, we examine the conditions under which a higher-spin string theory can be quantised. The quantisability is crucially dependent on the way in which the matter currents are realised at the classical level. In particular, we construct classical realisations for the $W_{2,s}$ algebra, which is generated by a primary spin-$s$ current in addition to the energy-momentum tensor, and discuss the quantisation for $sle8$. From these examples we see that quantum BRST operators can exist even when there is no quantum generalisation of the classical $W_{2,s}$ algebra. Moreover, we find that there can be several inequivalent ways of quantising a given classical theory, leading to different BRST operators with inequivalent cohomologies. We discuss their relation to certain minimal models. We also consider the hierarchical embeddings of string theories proposed recently by Berkovits and Vafa, and show how the already-known $W$ strings provide examples of this phenomenon. Attempts to find higher-spin fermionic generalisations lead us to examine the whether classical BRST operators for $W_{2,{nover 2}}$ ($n$ odd) algebras can exist. We find that even though such fermionic algebras close up to null fields, one cannot build nilpotent BRST operators, at least of the standard form.
We review various methods for finding exact solutions of higher spin theory in four dimensions, and survey the known exact solutions of (non)minimal Vasilievs equations. These include instanton-like and black hole-like solutions in (A)dS and Kleinian spacetimes. A perturbative construction of solutions with the symmetries of a domain wall is described as well. Furthermore, we review two proposed perturbative schemes: one based on perturbative treatment of the twistor space field equations followed by inverting Fronsdal kinetic terms using standard Greens functions; and an alternative scheme based on solving the twistor space field equations exactly followed by introducing the spacetime dependence using perturbatively defined gauge functions. Motivated by the need to provide a higher spin invariant characterization of the exact solutions, aspects of a proposal for a geometric description of Vasilievs equation involving an infinite dimensional generalization of anti de Sitter space is revisited and improved.
We classify a large set of melonic theories with arbitrary $q$-fold interactions, demonstrating that the interaction vertices exhibit a range of symmetries, always of the form $mathbb{Z}_2^n$ for some $n$, which may be $0$. The number of different theories proliferates quickly as $q$ increases above $8$ and is related to the problem of counting one-factorizations of complete graphs. The symmetries of the interaction vertex lead to an effective interaction strength that enters into the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the two-point function as well as the kernel used for constructing higher-point functions.
In this short note we present a Lagrangian formulation for free bosonic Higher Spin fields which belong to massless reducible representations of D-dimensional Anti de Sitter group using an ambient space formalism.
Using the off-shell formulation for ${mathcal N}=2$ conformal supergravity in four dimensions, we propose superconformal higher-spin multiplets of conserved currents and their associated unconstrained gauge prepotentials. The latter are used to construct locally superconformal chiral actions, which are demonstrated to be gauge invariant in arbitrary conformally flat backgrounds.