Higher Spin Conformal Currents in Minkowski Space

Using unfolded formulation of free equations for massless fields of all spins we obtain explicit form of higher-spin conformal conserved charges bilinear in 4d massless fields of arbitrary spins.Comment: LaTeX, 10 pages. Corrected typo

Mixed-symmetry massless gauge fields in AdS(5)

Free AdS(5) mixed-symmetry massless bosonic and fermionic gauge fields of arbitrary spins are described by using su(2,2) spinor language. Manifestly covariant action functionals are constructed and field equations are derived.Comment: 13 pages; v2: title changed, typos corrected, minor changes, reference added; v3: minor changes, published versio

Higher Spin Gravitational Couplings and the Yang--Mills Detour Complex

Gravitational interactions of higher spin fields are generically plagued by inconsistencies. We present a simple framework that couples higher spins to a broad class of gravitational backgrounds (including Ricci flat and Einstein) consistently at the classical level. The model is the simplest example of a Yang--Mills detour complex, which recently has been applied in the mathematical setting of conformal geometry. An analysis of asymptotic scattering states about the trivial field theory vacuum in the simplest version of the theory yields a rich spectrum marred by negative norm excitations. The result is a theory of a physical massless graviton, scalar field, and massive vector along with a degenerate pair of zero norm photon excitations. Coherent states of the unstable sector of the model do have positive norms, but their evolution is no longer unitary and their amplitudes grow with time. The model is of considerable interest for braneworld scenarios and ghost condensation models, and invariant theory.Comment: 19 pages LaTe

Master Higher-Spin Particle

We propose a "master" higher-spin (HS) particle system. The particle model relevant to the unfolded formulation of HS theory, as well as the HS particle model with a bosonic counterpart of supersymmetry, follow from the master model as its two different gauges. Quantization of the master system gives rise to a new form of the massless HS equations in an extended space involving, besides extra spinorial coordinates, also a complex scalar one. As solutions to these equations we recover the massless HS multiplet with fields of all integer and half-integer helicities, and obtain new multiplets with a non-zero minimal helicity. The HS multiplets are described by complex wave functions which are holomorphic in the scalar coordinate and carry an extra U(1) charge q. The latter fully characterizes the given multiplet by fixing the minimal helicity as q/2. We construct a twistorial formulation of the master system and present the general solution of the associate HS equations through an unconstrained twistor "prepotential".Comment: 21 pages, minor corrections, version to appear in Class. Quantum Gra

The steppe elephant Mammuthus trogontherii (Pohlig) from the Irtysh region near Omsk

A Pleistocene elephant skeleton was found in 1989 in the alluvial beds of the Tobolsk age on the Om River near the village of Ust’-Tarka (Ust’-Tarkskii District, Novosibirsk Region). The forelimbs and some thoracic and caudal vertebrae are not preserved. Judging from the heavy wear of M3/m3, this animal was about 50–60 years of individual age. The skeleton is about 3.5 m high at the withers. The geological age of the beds enclosing the skeleton and its morphological features suggest that it should be assigned to Mammuthus trogontherii

BTZ Black Hole as Solution of 3d Higher Spin Gauge Theory

BTZ black hole is interpreted as exact solution of 3d higher spin gauge theory. Solutions for free massless fields in BTZ black hole background are constructed with the help of the star-product algebra formalism underlying the formulation of 3d higher spin theory. It is shown that a part of higher spin symmetries remains unbroken for special values of the BTZ parameters.Comment: 31 pages, LaTeX; references correcte

Higher Spin Gravity with Matter in AdS_3 and Its CFT Dual

We study Vasiliev's system of higher spin gauge fields coupled to massive scalars in AdS_3, and compute the tree level two and three point functions. These are compared to the large N limit of the W_N minimal model, and nontrivial agreements are found. We propose a modified version of the conjecture of Gaberdiel and Gopakumar, under which the bulk theory is perturbatively dual to a subsector of the CFT that closes on the sphere.Comment: 58 pages; typos corrected, references adde