Cubic Interactions of Massless Bosonic Fields in Three Dimensions

In this Letter, we take the first step towards construction of nontrivial Lagrangian theories of higher-spin gravity in a metriclike formulation in three dimensions. The crucial feature of a metriclike formulation is that it is known how to incorporate matter interactions into the description. We derive a complete classification of cubic interactions for arbitrary triples s1, s2, s3 of massless fields, which are the building blocks of any interacting theory with massless higher spins. We find that there is, at most, one vertex for any given triple of spins in 3D (with one exception, s1=s2=s3=1, which allows for two vertices). Remarkably, there are no vertices for spin values that do not respect strict triangle inequalities and contain at least two spins greater than one. This translates into selection rules for three-point functions of higher-spin conserved currents in two dimensional conformal field theory. Furthermore, universal coupling to gravity for any spin is derived. Last, we argue that this classification persists in arbitrary Einstein backgrounds.