Spin-3 Topological Massive Gravity

Abstract

In this paper, we study the spin-3 topological massive gravity(TMG), paying special attention to its properties at the chiral point. We propose an action describing the high spin fields coupled to TMG. We discuss the spin-3 fluctuations around the AdS$_3$ vacuum and find that there is an extra local massive mode, besides the left-moving and right-moving boundary massless modes. At the chiral point, such extra mode becomes massless and degenerates with the left-moving mode. We show that at the chiral point the only degrees of freedom in the theory are the boundary right-moving graviton and spin-3 field. We conjecture that spin-3 chiral gravity with Brown-Henneaux boundary condition is holographically dual to 2D chiral CFT with classical $W_3$ algebra and central charge $c_R=3l/G$.