Causality in gravity, higher spins and the AdS/CFT duality

• Applicant: Dr. Gustavo Lucena Gómez, since 10/2016
• Subject Area: Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Fields
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 298973791

The main purpose of the project would be to explore constraints imposed by causality and positivity of energy fluxes on conformal field theories (CFT) with a weakly coupled gravitational dual description. Some of these requirements are new and have not been studied in the literature. These constrain the kind of higher curvature corrections that can be added to the low energy gravity effective action without spoiling its consistency. They also tie the relaxation of some of these constraints to the addition of new higher spin particles in the spectrum of the theory. Moreover, this infinite set of new fields has to be included in a self-consistent way, some of their couplings being also constrained. This will provide important clues on the role of higher curvature corrections and higher spins in the consistency of gravity as well as non-gravitational field theories.The project would bring together researchers working on causal issues in gravity and AdS/CFT with those working on higher spin theories, building up on the latest developments in both topics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. Xian Otero Camanho, until 10/2016