On the fermionic Grande Bouffe: more on higher spin symmetry breaking in AdS/CFT

Abstract

We discuss fermionic higher spin gauge symmetry breaking in AdS space from a holographic perspective. Analogously to the recently discussed bosonic case, the higher spin Goldstino mode responsible for the symmetry breaking has a non-vanishing mass in the limit in which the gauge symmetry is restored. This result is precisely in agreement with the AdS/CFT correspondence, which implies that N=4 SYM at vanishing coupling constant is dual to a theory in AdS which exhibits higher spin gauge symmetry enhancement. When the SYM coupling is non-zero, the current conservation condition becomes anomalous, and correspondingly the local higher spin symmetry in the bulk gets spontaneously broken. We also show that the mass of the Goldstino mode is exactly the one predicted by the correspondence. Finally, we obtain the form of a class of fermionic higher spin currents in the SYM side.