On the Weyl anomaly of 4D conformal higher spins: a holographic approach

• Main Authors: S. Acevedo, R. Aros, F. Bugini, D.E. Diaz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-11-01
• Series: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Subjects: AdS-CFT Correspondence; Anomalies in Field and String Theories; Higher Spin Gravity
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP11(2017)082

Abstract We present a first attempt to derive the full (type-A and type-B) Weyl anomaly of four dimensional conformal higher spin (CHS) fields in a holographic way. We obtain the type-A and type-B Weyl anomaly coefficients for the whole family of 4D CHS fields from the one-loop effective action for massless higher spin (MHS) Fronsdal fields evaluated on a 5D bulk Poincaré-Einstein metric with an Einstein metric on its conformal boundary. To gain access to the type-B anomaly coefficient we assume, for practical reasons, a Lichnerowicz-type coupling of the bulk Fronsdal fields with the bulk background Weyl tensor. Remarkably enough, our holographic findings under this simplifying assumption are certainly not unknown: they match the results previously found on the boundary counterpart under the assumption of factorization of the CHS higher-derivative kinetic operator into Laplacians of “partially massless” higher spins on Einstein backgrounds.