Higher Spin Resolution of a Toy Big Bang

Abstract

Diffeomorphisms preserve spacetime singularities, whereas higher spin symmetries need not. Since three dimensional de Sitter space has quotients that have big-bang/big-crunch singularities and since dS_3-gravity can be written as an SL(2,C) Chern-Simons theory, we investigate SL(3,C) Chern-Simons theory as a higher-spin context in which these singularities might get resolved. As in the case of higher spin black holes in AdS_3, the solutions are invariantly characterized by their holonomies. We show that the dS_3 quotient singularity can be de-singularized by an SL(3,C) gauge transformation that preserves the holonomy: this is a higher spin resolution the cosmological singularity. Our work deals exclusively with the bulk theory, and is independent of the subtleties involved in defining a CFT_2 dual to dS_3 in the sense of dS/CFT.

v2-v3: typos removed, refs added. v4: minor improvements, Phys Rev D version, v5: one more typo fixed, footnote added

References in corpus (5)

• Asymptotic symmetries of three-dimensional gravity coupled to higher-spin fields
• Nonlinear W(infinity) Algebra as Asymptotic Symmetry of Three-Dimensional Higher Spin Anti-de Sitter Gravity
• Higher-Spin Theories and $Sp(2M)$ Invariant Space--Time
• Chiral geometries of (2+1)-d AdS gravity
• Holographic Renormalisation for the Spin-3 Theory and the (A)dS3/CFT2 correspondence

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