Journal of High Energy Physics (Jul 2024)

Low spin solutions of higher spin gravity: BPST instanton

  • Evgeny Skvortsov,
  • Yihao Yin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2024)032
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2024, no. 7
pp. 1 – 29

Abstract

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Abstract Higher spin gravities do not have a low energy limit where higher-spin fields decouple from gravity. Nevertheless, it is possible to construct fine-tuned exact solutions that activate low-spin fields without sourcing the higher-spin fields. We show that BPST (Belavin-Polyakov-Schwartz-Tyupkin) instanton is an exact solution of Chiral Higher Spin Gravity, i.e. it is also a solution of the holographic dual of Chern-Simons matter theories. This gives an example of a low-spin solution. The instanton sources the opposite helicity spin-one field and a scalar field. We derive an Effective Field Theory that describes the coupling between an instanton and the other two fields, whose action starts with the Chalmers-Siegel action and has certain higher derivative couplings.

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