BPS phases and fortuity in higher spin holography

Abstract

We study the BPS states of $U(N)_k\times U(1)_{-k}$ vector Chern-Simons theory on a sphere at weak coupling $\lambda=\frac{N}{k}\ll 1$, dual to an AdS$_4$ higher spin gravity. Higher spin currents are well known to be anomalous at $\lambda\neq 0$. We show that these non-BPS higher spin particles form multi-particle `BPS bounds' at low energy, and interpret them as a primordial form of small black hole states. We also construct a new heavy BPS operator at $N=2$. We study the BPS phases of this system from the large $N$ index at Planckian `temperatures'. The deconfined saddles at high temperature exist only above a threshold, similar to the BTZ black holes. The low temperature saddles are given by novel 2-cut eigenvalue distributions. Their phase transition involves subtle issues like the holomorphic anomaly and the background independence, whose studies we initiate. In particular, we obtain a lower bound on the critical temperature by studying the eigenvalue instantons.