Spacetime And Matter In Three Dimensional Higher Spin Gravity

We investigate the physical content of three-dimensional higher spin gravity, a sophisticated toy model of high energy string theory. Starting from spin-3 gravity and working our way toward the theory of an infinite tower of higher spins coupled to matter, we show how to use higher spin gauge invariance to consistently generalize ordinary conceptions of black holes. We also consider the dynamics of scalar fields in nontrivial higher spin backgrounds. In view of the AdS/CFT correspondence as applied to certain vector-like conformal field theories with extended conformal symmetry, we make several successful comparisons of bulk and boundary computations.