Higher-spin (HS) gauge theories involve a massless particle of spin two, that is a graviton, together with (typically infinitely many) gauge fields of spin greater than two. An important motivation for their study originates from the long-standing difficulties encountered in the quantisation of gravity, which impel to explore extensions thereof that may have a better UV behaviour. Including fields of spin greater than two is mainly suggested by two observations: the constraints brought by a larger gauge symmetry may remove some UV divergences as supersymmetry does, and string theory does involve fields of arbitrary spin. HS gauge theories are indeed models of intermediate complexity with respect to these examples, and aspire to improve the UV behaviour of supergravity models without resorting to fully-fledged string theory and its plethora of additional particles.

The ESI programme is expected to foster further progress on the following developments:

• Foundations and properties of higher-spin gauge theories
• Holography
• Tensionless limit of string theory
• Applications

The programme is organized as follows:
Week 1: March 11 - 15, 2019 Introductory talks and seminar talks + public talk

Talk Schedule Week 1 Flyer (pdf)

Public Talk Prof. Marc Henneaux (U Libre de Bruxelles)
Gravitation and Quantum Mechanics: the biggest crisis in modern physics? 
Flyer (pdf) 

Week 2: March 18 - 22, 2019 Workshop

Talk Schedule Workshop Flyer (pdf)

Week 3: March 25 - 29, 2019 Seminar talks and discussions

Talk Schedule Week 3 Flyer (pdf)

Week 4: April 1 - 5, 2019 Seminar talks and discussions

Talk Schedule Week 4 Flyer (pdf)

For further information see programme Homepage.