Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

W(0,b) algebra and the dual theory of 3D asymptotically flat higher spin gravity

Surajit Biswas

IISER Bhopal

BMS algebra in three spacetime dimensions can be deformed into a two parameter family of algebra known as W(a,b) algebra. For a=0, we show that other than W(0,-1), no other W(0,b) algebra admits a non-degenerate bilinear and thus one can not have a Chern-Simons gauge theory formulation with them. However, they may appear in a three-dimensional gravity description, where we also need to have a spin-2 generator that comes from the (a=0,b=-1) sector. In the present work, we have demonstrated that the asymptotic symmetry algebra of a spin 3 gravity theory on flat spacetime has both the W(0,-1) and W(0,-2) algebras as subalgebras. We have also constructed a dual boundary field theory for this higher spin gravity theory by using the Chern-Simons/Wess-Zumino-Witten correspondence.