A Fiber Approach to Harmonic Analysis of Unfolded Higher-Spin Field Equations

In Vasiliev's unfolded formulation of higher-spin dynamics the standard fields are embedded on-shell into covariantly constant master fields valued in Lorentz-covariant slices of the star-product algebra A of functions on the singleton phase space. Correspondingly, the harmonic expansion is taken over compact slices of A that are unitarizable in a rescaled trace-norm rather than the standard Killing norm. Motivated by the higher-derivative nature of the theory, we examine indecomposable unitarizable Harish-Chandra modules consisting of standard massless particles plus linearized runaway solutions. This extension arises naturally in the above fiber approach upon realizing compact-weight states as non-polynomial analytic functions in A.Comment: 80 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes: typos corrected, two footnotes and references added. To be published in JHE

4D Higher Spin Black Holes with Nonlinear Scalar Fluctuations

We construct an infinite-dimensional space of solutions to Vasiliev's equations in four dimensions that are asymptotic to AdS spacetime and superpose massless scalar particle modes over static higher spin black holes. Each solution is obtained by a large gauge transformation of an all-order perturbatively defined particular solution given in a simple gauge, in which the spacetime connection vanishes, the twistor space connection is holomorphic, and all local degrees of freedom are encoded into the residual twistor space dependence of the spacetime zero-forms. The latter are expanded over two dual spaces of Fock space operators, corresponding to scalar particle and static black hole modes, equipped with positive definite sesquilinear and bilinear forms, respectively. Switching on an AdS vacuum gauge function, the twistor space connection becomes analytic at generic spacetime points, which makes it possible to reach Vasiliev's gauge, in which Fronsdal fields arise asymptotically, by another large transformation given here at first order. The particle and black hole modes are related by a twistor space Fourier transform, resulting in a black hole backreaction already at the second order of classical perturbation theory. We speculate on the existence of a fine-tuned branch of moduli space that is free from black hole modes and directly related to the quasi-local deformed Fronsdal theory. Finally, we comment on a possible interpretation of the higher spin black hole solutions as black-hole microstates.Comment: 63 pages + appendices; v2: reference added; v3: comments and references added, typos correcte

Higher Spin Gravity Amplitudes From Zero-form Charges

We examine zero-form charges in Vasiliev's four-dimensional bosonic higher spin gravities. These are classical observables given by integrals over noncommutative twistor space of adjoint combinations of the zero-form master fields, including insertions of delta functions in the deformed oscillators serving as gauge invariant regulators. The regularized charges admit perturbative expansions in terms of multi-linear functionals in the Weyl zero-form, which are Bose symmetric and higher spin invariant by construction, and that can be interpreted as basic building blocks for higher spin gravity amplitudes. We compute two- and three-point functions by attaching external legs given by unfolded bulk-to-boundary propagators, and identify the result with the two- and three-current correlation functions in theories of free conformal scalars and fermions in three dimensions. Modulo assumptions on the structure of the sub-leading corrections, and relying on the generalized Hamiltonian off-shell formulation, we are thus led to propose an expression for the free energy as a sum of suitably normalized zero-form chargesComment: V2: Typos corrected, references added, footnote and note added, discussion section improve

Three-dimensional fractional-spin gravity

Using Wigner-deformed Heisenberg oscillators, we construct 3D Chern--Simons models consisting of fractional-spin fields coupled to higher-spin gravity and internal non-abelian gauge fields. The gauge algebras consist of Lorentz-tensorial Blencowe-Vasiliev higher-spin algebras and compact internal algebras intertwined by infinite-dimensional generators in lowest-weight representations of the Lorentz algebra with fractional spin. In integer or half-integer non-unitary cases, there exist truncations to gl(N,N +/- 1) or gl(N|N +/- 1) models. In all non-unitary cases, the internal gauge fields can be set to zero. At the semi-classical level, the fractional-spin fields are either Grassmann even or odd. The action requires the enveloping-algebra representation of the deformed oscillators, while their Fock-space representation suffices on-shell.Comment: 38 pages, 2 tables. References [7,13,61] added with comments in the second version. To appear in JHE

Gravitational and gauge couplings in Chern-Simons fractional spin gravity

We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the consistency of the supertrace, through the existence of a certain ground state projector. We build this projector and check its properties to the first two orders in the number operator and to all orders in the deformation parameter. We then find the relation between the gravitational and internal gauge couplings in the resulting unified three-dimensional Chern--Simons theory for Blencowe--Vasiliev higher spin gravity coupled to fractional spin fields and internal gauge potentials. We also examine the model for integer or half-integer fractional spins, where infinite dimensional ideals arise and decouple, leaving finite dimensional gauge algebras $gl(2l+1)$ or $gl(l|l+1)$ and various real forms thereof.Comment: Published in JHEP. 32 pages, 3 figure