# Higher-spin gravity Higher-spin gravity refers to gravitational theories containing at least one field of spin larger than two. The standard model and supergravity theories do not have higher spin fields, but String Theory has towers of massive higher spin states. The presence of at least one massless higher spin field implies that the theory contains the graviton, so these theories are all gravitational. Technically, a higher-spin theory is one where the spacetime isometry algebra is extended to include higher-spin generators and is gauged. Higher-spin gravity theories are interesting because they usually probe UV physics and are hence helpful for investigating quantum gravity. It is said that some quantum issues are pushed to the classical level. ## Refs - reviews - [[2010#Bekaert, Boulanger, Sundell (Review)]] - [[2022#Bekaert, Boulanger, Campoleoni, Chiodaroli, Francia, Grigoriev, Sezgin, Skvortsov (Review)]] - castro notes [](https://inspirehep.net/files/51565a8c01eff3499ec9330c521cf47f) - pure higher-spin gravity in AdS$_3$ (can truncate to a finite tower) - [[1989#Blencowe]] - [[2020#Alday, Bae, Benjamin, Jorge-Diaz]]: spectrum, unitarity of CFT, and addition of massive states that cures negative norm - [[0330 Twistor theory|twistor]] actions - chiral higher spin gravity in AdS: [[Tran202209]][](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.00925.pdf) - holographic dual - vector-like models - [[2002#Sezgin, Sundell]] - [[2002#Klebanov, Polyakov]] - evidence for duality - [[2009#Giombi, Yin]] - [[2010#Giombi, Yin]] - the CFTs have the correct symmetries - [[2011#Maldacena, Zhiboedov]] - [[BoulangerPonomarevSkvortsovTaronna2013]][](http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.5180) - [[AlbaDiab2015]][](http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.02535) - reconstruction - [[2023#Koch]] - examples - minimal model of chiral higher spin gravity - [[SharapovSkvortsovSukhanovVanDongen2022]][](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.07794.pdf) - bounded spin - [[GrigorievLovrekovicSkvortsov2019]][](https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.13305) - [[0013 Vasiliev theory]] - [[AharonyChesterUrbach2020]] - [[2022#Aharony, Chester, Sheaffer, Urbach]] - causality issues - [[2014#Camanho, Edelstein, Maldacena, Zhiboedov]] - applications - [[Kruthoff2022]][](https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.09685): higher spin gravity for [[0154 Ensemble averaging|ensembles]] etc ## Properties - [[0636 Higher-spin black hole]]: - [[2011]] - [[2011#Ammon, Gutperle, Kraus, Perlmutter]] - locality and gauge invariance of bilocal cubic correlators: - [[LysovNeiman2022]][](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.00854.pdf)