Related papers: Swampland Conjectures for an Almost Topological Gr…
We construct a new gravitational action which includes cubic curvature interactions and which provides a useful toy model for the holographic study of a three parameter family of four- and higher-dimensional CFT's. We also investigate the…
It is of interest to find criteria on a 2d CFT which indicate that it gives rise to emergent gravity in a macroscopic 3d AdS space via holography. Symmetric orbifolds in the large $N$ limit have partition functions which are consistent with…
We show that $3$-dimensional AdS spacetime can be semiclassically unstable due to strongly interacting quantum field effects. In our previous paper, we have pointed out the possibility of such an instability of AdS$_3$ by inspecting linear…
We construct a massive spin-2 theory in 2+1 dimensions that is immune to the bulk-boundary unitarity conflict in anti-de Sitter space and hence amenable to holography. The theory is an extension of Topologically Massive Gravity, just like…
Motivated by the similarity between CSW theory and the Chern Simons state for General Relativity in the Ashtekar variables, we explore what the universe would look like if it were in a state corresponding to a 3D TQFT. We end up with a…
Interacting AdS_4 higher spin gauge theories with N \geq 1 supersymmetry so far have been formulated as constrained systems of differential forms living in a twistor extension of 4D spacetime. Here we formulate the minimal N=1 theory in…
In this talk, we present some direct evidences of the Higher Spin/Vector Model correspondence. There are two particular examples we would like to address on. The first example concerns a constructive approach of four dimensional higher spin…
In order for string theory to be made compatible with the low-energy observations of a positive cosmological constant, there have been attempts to construct dS vacua in string theory which are particularly difficult to realize. Instead of…
Quantum gravity in an AdS spacetime is described by an SU(N) Yang-Mills theory on a sphere, a bounded many-body system. We argue that in the high temperature phase the theory is intrinsically non-perturbative in the large N limit. At any…
Minimal massive gravity in three dimensions propagates a single massive spin-2 mode around an AdS vacuum. It is distinguished by allowing for vacua with positive central charges of the asymptotic conformal algebra and a bulk graviton of…
Holographic duality is argued to relate classes of models that have equivalent unfolded formulation, hence exhibiting different space-time visualizations for the same theory. This general phenomenon is illustrated by the $AdS_4$ higher-spin…
We consider the theory of a generic rank-2 tensor field in three spacetime dimensions, which involves a symmetric tensor field transforming under infinitesimal diffeomorphisms, and a vector field, whose gauge transformation depends on a…
Motivated by the generation of action principles from off-shell dualisation, we present a general class of free, topological theories in three dimensional Minkowski spacetime that exhibit higher-spin gauge invariance. In the spin-two case,…
In this thesis, topologically massive Yang-Mills theory is studied in the framework of geometric quantization. This theory has a mass gap that is proportional to the topological mass $m$. Thus, Yang-Mills contribution decays exponentially…
We consider the behavior of open strings on AdS wormholes in Gauss-Bonnet theory, which are the Gauss-Bonnet gravity duals of a pair of field theories. A string with both endpoints on the same side of the wormhole describes two charges…
We derive a theory of quantum gravity containing an AdS$_3$ isometry/qubit duality. The theory is based on a superalgebra generalization of the enveloping algebra of the homogeneous AdS$_3$ spacetime isometry group and is isomorphic to the…
The swampland conjectures seek to distinguish effective field theories which can be consistently embedded in a theory of quantum gravity from those which can not (and are hence referred to as being in the swampland). We consider two such…
A two-dimensional CFT dual to a semiclassical theory of gravity in three dimensions must have a large central charge $c$ and a sparse low energy spectrum. This constrains the OPE coefficients and density of states of the CFT via the…
Quantum gravity in AdS$_7 \times$S$^4$ is dual to a 6d superconformal field theory, known as the 6d $(2,0)$ theory, which is very challenging to describe because it lacks a conventional Lagrangian description. On the other hand, certain…
We investigate in which sense, at the linearized level, one can extend the 3D topologically massive gravity theory beyond three dimensions. We show that, for each k=1,2,3... a free topologically massive gauge theory in 4k-1 dimensions can…