Towards a metric-like formulation of three-dimensional higher-spin gauge theories
Abstract:
We identify the most general coupling between a spin-3 field and gravity at quadratic order in the higher-spin field and in three space-time dimensions. We then select the terms that emerge from the elimination of auxiliary fields in the corresponding sl(3) x sl(3) Chern-Simons theory and we comment on the structure of the resulting metric-like gauge transformations.