On the higher spin spectrum of Chern-Simons theory coupled to fermions in the large flavour limit

Abstract In this note, we compute the higher spin spectrum of U(M) k Chern-Simons theory coupled to N flavours of fundamental fermions, in the limit N ≫ M with the ’t Hooft coupling λM=Nkm $${\lambda}_M=\frac{N}{k_m}$$ held fixed, to order M/N. This theory possesses a slightly broken higher spin symmetry, and may be of interest from the perspective of higher-spin and non-supersymmetric holography. We find that anomalous dimensions of the higher spin currents achieve a finite value at strong coupling λ M → ∞, which grows with spin as log s for large s, as expected for gauge theories