Higher Spin Black Holes from CFT

Higher spin gravity in three dimensions has explicit black holes solutions, carrying higher spin charge. We compute the free energy of a charged black hole from the holographic dual, a 2d CFT with extended conformal symmetry, and find exact agreement with the bulk thermodynamics. In the CFT, higher spin corrections to the free energy can be calculated at high temperature from correlation functions of W-algebra currents.Comment: 24 pages; v2 reference adde

Limits of minimal models and continuous orbifolds

The lambda=0 't Hooft limit of the 2d W_N minimal models is shown to be equivalent to the singlet sector of a free boson theory, thus paralleling exactly the structure of the free theory in the Klebanov-Polyakov proposal. In 2d, the singlet sector does not describe a consistent theory by itself since the corresponding partition function is not modular invariant. However, it can be interpreted as the untwisted sector of a continuous orbifold, and this point of view suggests that it can be made consistent by adding in the appropriate twisted sectors. We show that these twisted sectors account for the `light states' that were not included in the original 't Hooft limit. We also show that, for the Virasoro minimal models (N=2), the twisted sector of our orbifold agrees precisely with the limit theory of Runkel & Watts. In particular, this implies that our construction satisfies crossing symmetry.Comment: 33 pages; v2: minor improvements and references added, published versio

The Primary Spin-4 Casimir Operators in the Holographic SO(N) Coset Minimal Models

Starting from SO(N) current algebra, we construct two lowest primary higher spin-4 Casimir operators which are quartic in spin-1 fields. For N is odd, one of them corresponds to the current in the WB_{\frac{N-1}{2}} minimal model. For N is even, the other corresponds to the current in the WD_{\frac{N}{2}} minimal model. These primary higher spin currents, the generators of wedge subalgebra, are obtained from the operator product expansion of fermionic (or bosonic) primary spin-N/2 field with itself in each minimal model respectively. We obtain, indirectly, the three-point functions with two real scalars, in the large N 't Hooft limit, for all values of the 't Hooft coupling which should be dual to the three-point functions in the higher spin AdS_3 gravity with matter.Comment: 65 pages; present the main results only and to appear in JHEP where one can see the Appendi

Conical Defects in Higher Spin Theories

We study conical defect geometries in the SL(N) Chern-Simons formulation of higher spin gauge theories in AdS_3. We argue that (for N\geq 4) there are special values of the deficit angle for which these geometries are actually smooth configurations of the underlying theory. We also exhibit a gauge in which these geometries can be viewed as wormholes interpolating between two distinct asymptotically AdS_3 spacetimes. Remarkably, the spectrum of smooth SL(N,C) solutions, after an appropriate analytic continuation, exactly matches that of the so-called "light primaries" in the minimal model W_N CFTs at finite N. This gives a candidate bulk interpretation of the latter states in the holographic duality proposed in [1].Comment: 38 page

Supersymmetric holography on AdS3

The proposed duality between Vasiliev's supersymmetric higher spin theory on AdS3 and the 't Hooft limit of the 2d superconformal Kazama-Suzuki models is analysed in detail. In particular, we show that the partition functions of the two theories agree in the large N limit.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures, improved fig.

The Coset Spin-4 Casimir Operator and Its Three-Point Functions with Scalars

We find the GKO coset construction of the dimension 4 Casimir operator that contains the quartic WZW currents contracted with completely symmetric SU(N) invariant tensors of ranks 4, 3, and 2. The requirements, that the operator product expansion with the diagonal current is regular and it should be primary under the coset Virasoro generator of dimension 2, fix all the coefficients in spin-4 current, up to two unknown coefficients. The operator product expansion of coset primary spin-3 field with itself fixes them completely. We compute the three-point functions with scalars for all values of the 't Hooft coupling in the large N limit. At fixed 't Hooft coupling, these three-point functions are dual to that found by Chang and Yin recently in the undeformed AdS_3 bulk theory (higher spin gravity with matter).Comment: 65 pages; the ambiguity for the two coefficient functions is clarified and the abstract, the introduction, the subsection 3.4 and the conclusion are improved and to appear in JHE

Intersecting D4-branes Model of Holographic QCD and Tachyon Condensation

We consider the intersecting D4-brane and anti-D4-brane model of holographic QCD, motivated by the model that has recently been suggested by Van Raamsdonk and Whyte. We analyze such D4-branes by the use of the action with a bi-fundamental ``tachyon'' field, so that we find the classical solutions describing the intersecting D4-branes and the U-shaped D4-branes. We show that the ``tachyon'' field in the bulk theory provides a current quark mass and a quark condensate to the dual gauge theory and that the lowest modes of mesons obtain mass via tachyon condensation. Then evaluating the properties of a pion, one can reproduce Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures; v2: refs. added; v3: discussions on Chern-Simons terms are adde

On effective actions of BPS branes and their higher derivative corrections

We calculate in detail the disk level S-matrix element of one Ramond-Ramond field and three gauge field vertex operators in the world volume of BPS branes, to find four gauge field couplings to all orders of $\alpha'$ up to on-shell ambiguity. Then using these infinite couplings we find that the massless pole of the field theory amplitude is exactly equal to the massless pole S-matrix element of this amplitude for the $p=n$ case to all orders of $\alpha'$. Finally we show that the infinite massless poles and the contact terms of this amplitude for the $p=n+2$ case can be reproduced by the Born-Infeld action and the Wess-Zumino actions and by their higher derivative corrections.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures, minor corrections,references added and version published in JHE

Thermodynamics of Higher Spin Black Holes in AdS3_3

We discuss the thermodynamics of recently constructed three-dimensional higher spin black holes in SL(N,R)\times SL(N,R) Chern-Simons theory with generalized asymptotically-anti-de Sitter boundary conditions. From a holographic perspective, these bulk theories are dual to two-dimensional CFTs with W_N symmetry algebras, and the black hole solutions are dual to thermal states with higher spin chemical potentials and charges turned on. Because the notion of horizon area is not gauge-invariant in the higher spin theory, the traditional approaches to the computation of black hole entropy must be reconsidered. One possibility, explored in the recent literature, involves demanding the existence of a partition function in the CFT, and consistency with the first law of thermodynamics. This approach is not free from ambiguities, however, and in particular different definitions of energy result in different expressions for the entropy. In the present work we show that there are natural definitions of the thermodynamically conjugate variables that follow from careful examination of the variational principle, and moreover agree with those obtained via canonical methods. Building on this intuition, we derive general expressions for the higher spin black hole entropy and free energy which are written entirely in terms of the Chern-Simons connections, and are valid for both static and rotating solutions. We compare our results to other proposals in the literature, and provide a new and efficient way to determine the generalization of the Cardy formula to a situation with higher spin charges.Comment: 30 pages, PDFLaTeX; v2: typos corrected, explicit expressions for the free energy adde

Back reaction, emission spectrum and entropy spectroscopy

Recently, an interesting work, which reformulates the tunneling framework to directly produce the Hawking emission spectrum and entropy spectroscopy in the tunneling picture, has been received a broad attention. However, during the emission process, most related observations have not incorporated the effects of back reaction on the background spacetime, whose derivations are therefore not the desiring results for the real physical process. With this point as a central motivation, in this paper we suitably adapt the \emph{reformulated} tunneling framework so that it can well accommodate the effects of back reaction to produce the Hawking emission spectrum and entropy spectroscopy. Consequently, we interestingly find that, when back reaction is considered, the Parikh-Wilczek's outstanding observations that, an isolated radiating black hole has an unitary-evolving emission spectrum that is \emph{not} precisely thermal, but is related to the change of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, can also be reproduced in the reformulated tunneling framework, meanwhile the entropy spectrum has the same form as that without inclusion of back reaction, which demonstrates the entropy quantum is \emph{independent} of the effects of back reaction. As our final analysis, we concentrate on the issues of the black hole information, but \emph{unfortunately} find that, even including the effects of back reaction and higher-order quantum corrections, such tunneling formalism can still not provide a mechanism for preserving the black hole information.Comment: 16 pages, no figure, use JHEP3.cls. to be published in JHE