Off-shell Formulation of Higher-Spin Gravity Part I: Classical Action
Abstract:
We provide Vasiliev's fully nonlinear equations of motion for bosonic higher spin
gauge fields in four spacetime dimensions with an action principle based on a generalized
Hamiltonian sigma model. The action contains two types of interactions appearing in a Q-structure
and in a generalized Poisson structure. We provide boundary conditions on fields and gauge
parameters that are compatible with the variational principle and that make the system
perturbatively equivalent, on-shell, to Vasiliev's original system.
Talk based on 1102.2219 [hep-th] by N. Boulanger and P. Sundell.