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# Time-Evolution of a Collective Meson Field by the use of a Squeezed State

## 1 Introduction

One of the recent interests associated with the physics of the relativistic heavy-ion collisions is the investigation of the dynamics of matter at very high energy density. As for the chiral phase transition, especially, the possible formation of a disoriented chiral condensate in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions has been discussed.$`^{\text{ -}}`$ The time-evolution of the chiral condensate in the chiral phase transition is a main subject to study in diverse work, namely, the dynamics of the phase transition is investigated. In these studies, the O(4) sigma model has been used mainly as an effective model of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The time-evolution of a scalar field is also important to describe some aspects of inflationary model of universe.$`^{\text{ -}}`$ However, most analytical results in this field concern the classical equations of motion.

When the high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions occur, one expects the formation of the quark-gluon plasma. Also, it is expected that the chiral phase transition occurs and the chiral symmetric phase is realized. After the collisions, the hot region created by the collision will expand spatially and the temperature will become lower. Thus, the chiral phase transition will occurs again and the chiral broken phase will be realized. Here, let us consider so-called quench scenario. The chiral condensate which is a chiral order parameter must grow from 0 to $`\sigma `$. The relaxation process should be realized since the energy stored initially should flow elsewhere. Thus, the interesting and important problem is to make it clear how the relaxation occurs. The dissipative process in the linear sigma model has been treated in the framework of the Caldeira-Leggett theory in the context of the decay of the disoriented chiral condensate. In their work, the mechanism of relaxation has been given within the classical level.

One of the present authors (Y.T.) together with D. Vautherin and T. Matsui has indicated that the quantum fluctuation plays an important role for the chiral phase transition and the relaxation of the collective isospin rotation of the chiral condensate. The Gaussian approximation of the functional Schrödinger picture for the field theory has been adopted in our previous work. In this approach, both the mean field and the quantum fluctuations can be treated self-consistently including the quantum effect of the higher order of $`\mathrm{}`$. This approach is essentially same as the time-dependent variational approach with a squeezed state. In this paper, we will use the later approach to investigate the time-evolution of the chiral condensate and the quantum fluctuation around it because the fluctuation modes can be constructed explicitly. Except for the previous work, the time-development of the chiral condensate was examined to leading order in a large $`N`$ expansion in Ref.? by Cooper et. al. However, in our time-dependent variational approach with a squeezed state, it is easily possible to investigate the role of the quantum fluctuations systematically because the quantum state is definitely constructed by means of the squeezed state and the mode-expansion for quantum fluctuations is explicitly performed. The main aim of this paper is to point out that the quantum fluctuations are responsible for the occurrence of the relaxation process of the chiral condensate or chiral order parameter. Of course, the expansion of the system leads to a friction term. However, even if the expansion is not taken into account, it will be shown that the behavior like the damped oscillation for the chiral condensate appears due to the inclusion of the quantum fluctuations.

This paper is organized as follows : The time-dependent variational approach with a squeezed state is reviewed briefly and the mode functions in this approach are introduced in the case of the uniform condensate in the next section. This approach is applied to the linear sigma model and the basic equations are obtained in §3. The expanding geometry is presented in Appendix. The numerical results and discussion are given in §4. The last section is devoted to a summary.

## 2 Time-dependent variational approach with a squeezed state

In this section we briefly give the basic ingredients in the time-dependent variational approach with a squeezed state. The main advantage of this approach to the dynamical problem including both the degrees of freedom of the mean field (order parameter) and the quantum fluctuations around it (“mesons” if quantized) is in the fact that both degrees of freedom can be treated self-consistently through the nonlinear coupling. Further, we can get the canonical equations of motion describing their time-development.

### 2.1 Basic equations of motion

Apart from the sigma model, for simplicity, let us first consider a scalar field theory with one component. We start with the following Hamiltonian :

$$\widehat{H}=d^3𝒙\left\{\frac{1}{2}\pi (𝒙)^2+\frac{1}{2}\left(\varphi (𝒙)\right)^2+U[\varphi (𝒙)]\right\}.$$
(2.1)
We take a following squeezed state as a trial state :

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left(S(t)\right)N(t)\mathrm{exp}\left(T(t)\right)|0,`$ (2.2)
$`S(t)`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle d^3𝒙[\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)\varphi (𝒙)\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)\pi (𝒙)]},`$
$`T(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3𝒙d^3𝒚\varphi (𝒙)\left[\frac{1}{4}(G^1(𝒙,𝒚,t)G^{(0)}(𝒙,𝒚)^1)+i\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)\right]\varphi (𝒚)},`$
where $`|0`$ is the reference vacuum with respect to free boson annihilation operators $`a_k`$; $`a_k|0=0`$, and $`G^{(0)}(𝒙,𝒚)=0|\varphi (𝒙)\varphi (𝒚)|0`$. Further, $`N`$ is a normalization factor. The variational functions are $`\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)`$, $`\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)`$, $`G(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$, respectively. The expectation values for the field operators are obtained as

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|\varphi (𝒙)|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)=\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t),\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|\pi (𝒙)|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)=\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t),`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|\varphi (𝒙)\varphi (𝒚)|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)=\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)\overline{\phi }(𝒚,t)+G(𝒙,𝒚,t),`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|\pi (𝒙)\pi (𝒚)|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)=\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)\overline{\pi }(𝒚,t)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}G^1(𝒙,𝒚,t)+4𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)G(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)|𝒚,`$
where we used the following notation :

$$𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)G(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)|𝒚d^3𝒙^{}d^3𝒚^{}\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒙^{},t)G(𝒙^{},𝒚^{},t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒚^{},𝒚,t).$$
(2.4)
Here, $`\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)`$ represents the condensate or the mean field. The two-point function $`G(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ means the two-point correlation function with the order of $`\mathrm{}`$. This function represents the quantum fluctuation around the mean field $`\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)`$. For later convenience, we introduce $`^{(n)}[\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)]`$ defined as

$$^{(n)}[\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)]=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{1}{2}G(𝒙,𝒙,t)\frac{^2}{z^2}\right\}U^{(n)}[z]|_{z=\overline{\phi }(𝐱,t)}$$
(2.5)
with $`U^{(n)}[z]=d^nU/dz^n`$. Here, $`^{(0)}[\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)]`$ is nothing but the expectation value of the functional $`U[\varphi (𝒙)]`$ of the field operator $`\varphi (𝒙)`$. From this expression, it is seen that the fluctuation around the mean field can be taken into account with the loop contributions $`G(𝒙,𝒙,t)`$.

The state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)`$ is determined as an functional of $`\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)`$, $`\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)`$, $`G(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$, and their time-development is governed by the time-dependent variational principle :

$$\delta 𝑑t\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|i\frac{}{t}\widehat{H}|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)=0.$$
(2.6)
The expectation value of the Hamiltonian is expressed as

$`H=\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|\widehat{H}|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)={\displaystyle d^3𝒙(𝒙)},`$ (2.7)
$`(𝒙)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)\right)^2+^{(0)}[\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}𝒙|G^1(t)|𝒙+2𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)G(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)|𝒙+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\underset{𝐲𝐱}{lim}_𝐱_𝐲𝒙|G(t)𝒚.`$
The variational equation (2.6) gives the canonical equations of motion :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)}{t}}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta \overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)}},{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\pi }(𝒙,t)}{t}}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta \overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)}},`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{G(𝒙,𝒚,t)}{t}}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)}},{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)}{t}}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta G(𝒙,𝒚,t)}}.`$ (2.8)
As a result, we obtain the following equations of motion :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)}{t^2}}^2\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)+^{(1)}[\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)]=0,`$ (2.9)
$`\left\{_𝒙^2+^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }(𝒙,t)]\right\}G(𝒙,𝒚,t)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}𝒙|G^1(t)|𝒚2𝒙|\dot{\mathrm{\Sigma }}(t)G(t)|𝒚`$
$`4𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)^2G(t)|𝒚,`$ (2.10)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{G(𝒙,𝒚,t)}{t}}=2[𝒙|G(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)|𝒚+𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }(t)G(t)|𝒚],`$ (2.11)
where we used the equation $`_t\overline{\phi }=\overline{\pi }`$. The above-derived equations of motion are the basic equations in the squeezed state approach.

### 2.2 Mode expansion

From now on, let us concentrate our attention on the equations of motion for quantum fluctuations in Eqs.(2.10) and (2.11). We assume that the condensate is uniform spatially with a translational invariance. With this assumption, the two-point functions $`G(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ only depend on $`𝒙𝒚`$. Thus it is possible to carry out the Fourier transformation as follows :

$$G(𝒙,𝒚,t)=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}d^3𝒌e^{i𝐤(𝐱𝐲)}G_𝐤(t),\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝒙,𝒚,t)=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}d^3𝒌e^{i𝐤(𝐱𝐲)}\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐤(t).$$
(2.12)
From Eq.(2.11) the equation $`\dot{G}_𝐤=4G_𝐤\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐤`$ is obtained. By using the above transformation and Eq.(2.10), we can get the following equation of motion for the Fourier modes $`G_𝐤(t)`$ :

$$\frac{1}{2}\ddot{G}_𝐤(t)\frac{\dot{G}_𝐤(t)^2}{4G_𝐤(t)}+𝒌^2G_𝐤(t)\frac{1}{4G_𝐤(t)}+[^{(2)}G]_𝐤=0,$$
(2.13)
where $`[^{(2)}G]_𝐤`$ means the Fourier-transformed mode of $`^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }(t)]G(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ :$`^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }(t)]G(𝒙,𝒚,t)=(1/(2\pi )^3)d^3𝒌e^{i𝐤(𝐱𝐲)}[^{(2)}G]_𝐤`$. It should be noted here that $`G_𝐤`$ has the meaning of the Gaussian width in terms of the functional Schrödinger picture, that is, $`G_𝐤`$ is positive definite. We can thus express $`G_𝐤(t)`$ as a square of the mode function $`\eta _𝐤`$ :

$$G_𝐤(t)=\eta _𝐤(t)^2.$$
(2.14)
Substituting Eq.(2.14) into Eq.(2.13), the equation of motion for fluctuation mode is obtained as

$$\ddot{\eta }_𝐤(t)+𝒌^2\eta _𝐤(t)+[^{(2)}G]_𝐤\frac{1}{\eta _𝐤(t)}\frac{1}{4\eta _𝐤(t)^3}=0.$$
(2.15)
The energy density in Eq.(2.7) is expressed in terms of the mean field $`\overline{\phi }(t)`$ and the mode functions $`\eta _𝐤(t)`$ as follows :

$$(𝒙)=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\overline{\phi }(t)}{t}\right)^2+^{(0)}[\overline{\phi }(t)]+\frac{1}{(2\pi )^3}d^3𝒌\left\{\frac{1}{2}\dot{\eta }_𝐤^2+\frac{1}{2}𝒌^2\eta _𝐤^2+\frac{1}{8\eta _𝐤^2}\right\}.$$
(2.16)
Here, we give two comments : One is about the mode expansion. If we rewrite the mode function into $`\eta _𝐤(t)=1/\sqrt{2ϵ_𝐤(t)}`$, the two-point correlation function $`G(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ is expressed as $`G(𝒙,𝒚,t)=_𝐤\xi _𝐤(𝒙,t)\xi _𝐤^{}(𝒚,t)/(2ϵ_𝐤(t))`$ where $`\xi _𝐤(𝒙,t)=e^{i𝐤𝐱}e^{i^tϵ_𝐤(t^{})𝑑t^{}}`$. This expression is nothing but that of the usual mode-expansion by the plane wave. Here $`ϵ_𝐤(t)`$ corresponds to the time-dependent single particle energy. Another is the treatment of the system at finite temperature. If it is necessary to deal with the system at finite temperature in the thermal equilibrium state, the mode expansion must be slightly modified. In the thermal equilibrium, the variables are time-independent. The field operator is divided into $`\varphi =\overline{\phi }+\widehat{\varphi }`$. Further, $`\widehat{\varphi }`$ is expanded by the mode functions :

$$\widehat{\varphi }=\underset{𝐤}{}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2ϵ_𝐤}}(\xi _𝐤b_𝐤+\xi _𝐤^{}b_𝐤^{}),$$
(2.17)
where $`b_𝐤|\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$ at zero temperature. In the thermal equilibrium state, we assume that $`b_𝐤b_𝐤^{}=b_𝐤^{}b_𝐤^{}^{}=0`$ and $`b_𝐤^{}b_𝐤^{}=n_𝐤\delta _{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}`$ where $`n_𝐤`$ is the bose distribution function : $`n_𝐤=1/(e^{\beta ϵ_𝐤}1)`$. Then, the two-point function $`G(𝒙,𝒚)`$ is expressed as

$$G(𝒙,𝒚)=\underset{𝐤}{}\frac{1}{2ϵ_𝐤}[\xi _𝐤(𝒙)\xi _𝐤^{}(𝒚)+(\xi _𝐤(𝒙)\xi _𝐤^{}(𝒚)+\xi _𝐤^{}(𝒙)\xi _𝐤(𝒚))n_𝐤].$$
(2.18)
Thus, it is necessary to replace the Fourier transformation in Eq.(2.14) into

$$G_𝐤=(1+2n_𝐤)\eta _𝐤^2$$
(2.19)
when we treat the system at finite temperature in the thermal equilibrium state.

## 3 Squeezed state approach to the linear sigma model

In this section, let us derive the equations of motion for the linear sigma model in this approach developed in §2. The Hamiltonian density is given as

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\pi _a(𝒙)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\varphi _a(𝒙)\varphi _a(𝒙)+\lambda \left(\varphi _a(𝒙)^2v^2\right)^2h\varphi _0(𝒙)`$ (3.1)
where $`a`$ runs 0 $`N1`$. The index 0 means the sigma-field and 1 $`N1`$ mean the pi-fields. Hereafter, we introduce $`m^2=4\lambda v^2`$. The trial state we here adopt is expressed as

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)={\displaystyle \underset{a=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}\mathrm{exp}\{S_a(t)\}N_a(t)\mathrm{exp}\{T_a(t)\}|0.`$ (3.2)
The expectation value of Hamiltonian density, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)||\mathrm{\Phi }(t)`$, is easily calculated similar to Eq.(2.7). For later convenience, we define $`_a^{(n)}`$ same as Eq.(2.5) :

$`_a^{(n)}[\overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)]`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}G_a(𝒙,𝒙,t){\displaystyle \frac{^2}{z^2}}\right\}{\displaystyle \frac{d^n}{dz^n}}({\displaystyle \frac{m^2}{2}}z^2+\lambda z^4)|_{z=\overline{\phi }_a(𝐱,t)}`$ (3.3)
with $`a=0N1`$. We omit the constant term $`m^4/(16\lambda )`$ because of no contribution to the dynamics.

The time-dependent variational principle (2.6) gives us the canonical equations of motion for $`(\overline{\phi }_a,\overline{\pi }_a)`$ and $`(G_a,\mathrm{\Sigma }_a)`$ and leads us to the following equations :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta \overline{\pi }_a(𝒙,t)}}=\overline{\pi }_a(𝒙,t),`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\pi }_a(𝒙,t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta \overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)}}`$ (3.4)
$`=`$ $`[^2\overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)+_a^{(1)}[\overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)]`$
$`+4\lambda \overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t){\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}(\overline{\phi }_b(𝒙,t)^2+G_b(𝒙,𝒙,t))h\delta _{a0}],`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{G_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)}}=2\left[𝒙|G_a(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }_a(t)|𝒚+𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }_a(t)G_a(t)|𝒚\right],`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta G_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)}}`$
$`=`$ $`[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_a^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)]\delta (𝒙𝒚){\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}𝒙|{\displaystyle \frac{1}{G_a(t)^2}}|𝒚+2𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }_a(t)^2|𝒚`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_𝒙_𝒚\delta (𝒙𝒚)+2\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}(\overline{\phi }_b(𝒙,t)^2+G_b(𝒙,𝒙,t))\delta (𝒙𝒚)].`$
The last equation in Eq.(LABEL:3-8) is simply expressed by multiplying $`G_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ from the right-hand side :

$`\left\{_𝒙^2+_a^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }_a(𝒙,t)]\right\}G_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ (3.6)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}𝒙|G_a^1(t)|𝒚2𝒙|\dot{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_a(t)G_a(t)|𝒚4𝒙|\mathrm{\Sigma }_a(t)^2G_a(t)|𝒚`$
$`4\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}\left(\overline{\phi }_b(𝒙,t)^2+G_b(𝒙,𝒚,t)\right)G_a(𝒙,𝒚,t).`$
Let us consider the case where the system has translational invariance. Then, the condensates do not depend on space-coordinate $`𝒙`$. Further, the two-point functions such as $`G_a(𝒙,𝒚,t)`$ depend on the difference $`𝒙𝒚`$ only. Then, we can carry out the Fourier transformation in the same way as those in the section 2. Comparing Eq.(2.10) with Eq.(3.6), we here regard $`^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }]`$ in Eq.(2.10) as $`_a^{(2)}[\overline{\phi }_a]+4\lambda _{ba}[\overline{\phi }_b^2+G_b(t)]`$. Performing the mode expansion similar to Eqs.(2.12) and (2.14), we finally obtain the following equations of motion for the condensate (mean field) and the quantum fluctuations :

$`\ddot{\overline{\phi }}_a(t)m^2\overline{\phi }_a(t)+4\lambda \overline{\phi }_a(t)^3+12\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _𝐤^a(t)^2\overline{\phi }_a(t)}`$
$`+4\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}\left(\overline{\phi }_b(t)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _𝐤^b(t)^2}\right)\overline{\phi }_a(t)h\delta _{a0}=0,`$
$`\ddot{\eta }_𝐤^a(t)+[𝒌^2m^2+12\lambda \overline{\phi }_a(t)^2+12\lambda {\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}}\eta _𝐤^{}^a(t)^2`$
$`+4\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}(\overline{\phi }_b(t)^2+{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}}\eta _𝐤^{}^b(t)^2)]\eta _𝐤^a(t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\eta _𝐤^a(t)^3}}=0.`$
These are the basic equations in the linear sigma model in the squeezed state approach. The condensate and the quantum fluctuations are coupled each other and the time-evolution of both the degrees of freedom should be determined self-consistently.

It is instructive to deal with the static case in the O(4) linear sigma model. The differential terms with respect to time $`t`$ disappear in this case. Let us assume that $`\overline{\phi }_1=\overline{\phi }_2=\overline{\phi }_3=0`$, that is, the chiral condensate points in the sigma-direction. Also, it is assumed that the each fluctuation mode of the direction of pi is identical, which we denote $`\eta ^\pi `$ : $`\eta _𝐤^1=\eta _𝐤^2=\eta _𝐤^3=\eta _𝐤^\pi `$. Then, the equations (3) read

$`\left(m^2+4\lambda \overline{\phi }_0^2+12\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _{𝐤}^{0}{}_{}{}^{2}}+12\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _{𝐤}^{\pi }{}_{}{}^{2}}\right)\overline{\phi }_0h=0,`$
$`\left(𝒌^2+M_\sigma ^2\right)\eta _𝐤^0={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\eta _{𝐤}^{0}{}_{}{}^{3}}},`$
$`\left(𝒌^2+M_\pi ^2\right)\eta _𝐤^\pi ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\eta _{𝐤}^{\pi }{}_{}{}^{3}}},`$ (3.8)
where we define the sigma meson mass $`M_\sigma `$ and the pion mass $`M_\pi `$ as

$`M_\sigma ^2=m^2+12\lambda \overline{\phi }_0^2+12\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _{𝐤^{}}^{0}{}_{}{}^{2}}+12\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _{𝐤^{}}^{\pi }{}_{}{}^{2}},`$
$`M_\pi ^2=m^2+4\lambda \overline{\phi }_0^2+4\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _{𝐤^{}}^{0}{}_{}{}^{2}}+20\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _{𝐤^{}}^{\pi }{}_{}{}^{2}}.`$ (3.9)
This is identical with the results derived in the previous paper. (The parameters $`\lambda /24`$ and $`m_0^2`$ should be replaced into $`\lambda `$ and $`m^2`$, respectively, in this paper. ) From Eq.(3), $`\eta _{𝐤}^{0}{}_{}{}^{2}`$ and $`\eta _{𝐤}^{\pi }{}_{}{}^{2}`$ are expressed as

$$\eta _{𝐤}^{0}{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{1}{2\sqrt{𝒌^2+M_\sigma ^2}},\eta _{𝐤}^{\pi }{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{1}{2\sqrt{𝒌^2+M_\pi ^2}}$$
(3.10)
and the two point function $`G_0`$ and $`G_\pi `$ are also obtained as

$$G_0=\frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{2\sqrt{𝒌^2+M_\sigma ^2}},G_\pi =\frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{2\sqrt{𝒌^2+M_\pi ^2}}.$$
(3.11)
The equations (3)$``$(3.10) compose the set of self-consistent equations.

## 4 Numerical result and discussion

We investigate the time-evolution of the mean field and quantum fluctuations around it based on the above-derived equations of motion in the context of the quench scenario in the relativistic nucleus-nucleus collision as was mentioned in §1. Our attention is paid to describe the damping of the amplitude of the mean field. It will be shown numerically that the fluctuation modes are responsible for the damping of the mean field configuration. Namely, since the energy stored in the mean field configuration flows to the fluctuation modes, the behavior like the damped oscillation appears in the mean field configuration. Our aim is here to describe the damping behavior qualitatively.

In general, the renormalization procedure is necessary in our approach because the loop contribution is included through the function $`G(𝒙,𝒙,t)`$. The renormalization will be carried out because the linear sigma model is renormalizable. However, it should be noted that the sigma model is here regarded as a low energy effective model of QCD. Thus, we become free from the complexity of the renormalization due to introducing the momentum cutoff in the context of the low energy effective theory.

The model parameters are given so as to reproduce the pion mass ($`M_\pi =138`$ MeV), the sigma meson mass ($`M_\sigma =600`$ MeV) and the pion decay constant ($`f_\pi =92`$ MeV) in the static case, respectively, that is,

$`m^2={\displaystyle \frac{M_\sigma ^23M_\pi ^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3(M_\sigma ^2M_\pi ^2)G_\pi }{f_\pi ^2+G_0G_\pi }},`$
$`\lambda ={\displaystyle \frac{M_\sigma ^2M_\pi ^2}{8(f_\pi ^2+G_0G_\pi )}},`$
$`h={\displaystyle \frac{M_\pi ^2f_\pi ^3+M_\sigma ^2f_\pi (G_0G_\pi )}{f_\pi ^2+G_0G_\pi }},`$ (4.1)
where $`G_0`$ and $`G_\pi `$ have been defined in Eq.(3.11) and can be calculated with an appropriate three-momentum cutoff. In general, the initial condition of the mean field is taken arbitrary in our framework. However, the quantum fluctuation modes should be taken so that the quantum effects are as small as possible in static case. Thus, we adopt the initial conditions of the quantum fluctuation modes so as to satisfy $`E_{\mathrm{fl}}/\eta _𝐤^a=0`$ with $`\overline{\phi }_0=92`$ MeV, where $`E_{\mathrm{fl}}`$ represents the energy of the quantum fluctuation part. Also, we take $`\dot{\eta }_𝐤^a(t=t_0)=0`$.

Let us investigate the time-evolution of the mean field on the $`\sigma `$-direction only. We assume $`\overline{\phi }_i=0`$ with $`i=13`$. In numerical calculation, we adopt the box normalization with the spatial length being $`L`$ for each direction. We then impose the periodic boundary condition for the fluctuation modes, namely, the allowed values of momenta are $`k_x=(2\pi /L)n_x`$ and so on, where $`n_x`$ is integer. The fluctuation modes labeled by $`(n_x,n_y,n_z)`$ are included in each isospin direction up to $`n^2=n_x^2+n_y^2+n_z^2=8^2`$. This corresponds to the momentum cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }1`$ GeV (990 MeV) since we have adopted the collisional region as $`L^3=10^3`$ fm<sup>3</sup>. It should be here noted that the equations of motion in Eq.(3) has the time-reversal invariance. Thus, the amplitude of the oscillation of the chiral condensate becomes large again even if the behavior of the damped oscillation is realized. However, in the realistic situation, the quantized pions and/or sigma mesons are emitted with a certain energy. Therefore, in our approach, it is enough to investigate the behavior of the condensate before the amplitude increases again.

Figure 1 shows us the time-evolution of the chiral condensate with $`\overline{\phi }(t=t_0=0)=50`$ MeV. It is shown that the behavior of the damped oscillation is realized. It should be noted that the center value of oscillation is slightly different from 92 MeV. The reason is that the effective potential $`^{(0)}[\overline{\phi }]`$ contains the effects of quantum fluctuations in our approach. If the quantum fluctuation modes have no time-dependence, the value of condensate should be 92 MeV. It is seen in Fig.2 that the $`\sigma `$-modes oscillate. However, in Fig.3, it is seen that the amplitude of $`\pi `$-modes with low momenta ($`n^22^2`$) increases. Namely, these amplitude of $`\pi `$-modes with low momenta increases corresponding to the decreasing of the amplitude of the chiral condensate. However, the $`\pi `$-mode with high momenta are not amplified but oscillated only. This situation can be easily understood. The instability occurs when the time-dependent “mass” term $`M_a(t)^2=m^2+12\lambda \overline{\phi }_a(t)+_{ba}4\lambda \overline{\phi }_b(t)+(\text{quantum correction})`$ is negative and the absolute value of it is greater than $`𝒌^2`$. For $`\sigma `$-mode, the time-dependent mass is $`M_0(t)^2=m^2+12\lambda \overline{\phi }_0(t)+(\text{quantum correction})`$ as is similar to Eq.(3). However, for the $`\pi `$-mode, the mass $`M_\pi (t)^2`$ is less than $`M_0(t)^2`$ because $`M_\pi (t)^2=m^2+4\lambda \overline{\phi }_0(t)+(\text{quantum correction})`$. Thus, the instability occurs in the $`\pi `$-modes with low momenta. As a result, the behavior of the amplified oscillation is realized. On the other word, as was shown in §2, if the mode functions are expressed as $`\eta _𝐤(t)=1/\sqrt{2ϵ_𝐤(t)}`$, the instability is realized when $`ϵ_𝐤^2(t)<0`$. When $`ϵ_𝐤^2(t)<0`$ for $`|𝒌|<\sqrt{M^2}`$, then $`G(𝒙,𝒙,t)`$ is obtained as

$$G(𝒙,𝒙,t)=\underset{|𝐤|<\sqrt{M^2}}{}\frac{i}{2|ϵ_𝐤(t)|}e^{\pm 2^t|ϵ_𝐤(t^{})|𝑑t^{}}+\underset{|𝐤|>\sqrt{M^2}}{}\frac{1}{2ϵ_𝐤(t)}.$$
(4.2)
Namely, this means that the imaginary part appears in the equation of motion for the mean field $`\overline{\phi }_a(t)`$. In this case the amplitudes of the low momentum modes with $`|𝒌|<\sqrt{M^2}`$ of quantum fluctuation increase in time. Thus, the relaxation process for the chiral condensate occurs due to the instability of the quantum fluctuation. Then, the energy stored in the chiral condensate flows to the quantum fluctuations.

In Figs.4$``$6 and 7$``$9, the only a few fluctuation modes up to $`n^2=4^2`$ and $`n^2=0`$ are taken into account in each isospin direction, respectively. The time-evolution of the condensate, the fluctuation modes with $`\sigma `$-direction and the fluctuation modes with $`\pi `$-directions are depicted in Figs.4, 5 and 6, respectively, up to $`n^2=4^2`$. The qualitative behavior is almost same as that in Figs.1$``$3. The fluctuation modes with $`n^23^2`$ for $`\pi `$-mode are not responsible for the damping of the amplitude of the condensate. However, in Figs.7$``$9, the qualitative behavior is quite different from Figs.1$``$3 and 4$``$6. The condensate is relaxed to the vacuum value no longer. The reason why the relaxation process is not realized is that the quantum fluctuation modes are not included sufficiently. Thus we conclude that the quantum fluctuation mode for $`\pi `$-direction with low momenta are responsible for the relaxation process of the chiral condensate during the chiral phase transition.

Let us consider the expanding geometry to break the time-reversal invariance. The basic equations are given in Appendix. The expanding parameter $`a(t)`$ is assumed so as to be proportional to time : $`a(t)=t/\tau _0+1`$. The parameter is taken as $`\tau _0=1`$ fm/$`c`$. The other parameters are same as those in Figs.1$``$3. Also, it is assumed that the expansion occurs in $`D=3`$-dimension. Figure 10 shows us that the behavior of the damped oscillation appears in the chiral condensate and the oscillation converges to the vacuum value. It is also seen that the amplitude of the quantum fluctuation modes also decreases gradually in time in Fig.11 ($`\sigma `$-modes) and Fig.12 ($`\pi `$-modes).

## 5 Summary

In this paper, we have investigated the time-evolution of the chiral condensate and the quantum fluctuation around it in the context of the chiral phase transition from the symmetric to symmetry-broken phase. We have formulated the time-dependent variational method with the squeezed state for O(N) linear sigma model. It has been shown numerically that the behavior like the damped oscillation for the chiral condensate appears due to the inclusion of the quantum fluctuations in the squeezed state approach. We have pointed out that the quantum fluctuations, especially $`\pi `$-modes with low momenta, are responsible for the occurrence of the relaxation process of the chiral condensate. Of course, the expansion of the system leads to a friction term. However, even if the expansion is not taken into account, it is concluded that the relaxation process occurs due to the quantum fluctuations around the mean field configuration. It may be also interesting to investigate the implication to the parametric resonance in the $`\pi `$-mode.

## Acknowledgements

One of the authors (Y.T.) would like to express his sincere thanks to ProfessorDominique Vautherin for giving his interest in this work and stimulating discussions when he stayed in the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique des Particules Elémentaires (LPTPE) of Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI). He also wishes to thank Dr. H. Fujii in University of Tokyo for the early collaboration in this work and giving him useful comments.

## A Expanding geometry

The collisional region may expand spatially. If it is necessary to include the effect of the expanding geometry, the metric may be taken as

$$ds^2=dt^2a(t)^2d𝒙^2=g_{\mu \nu }(t)dx^\mu dx^\nu ,$$
(A.1)
where $`a(t)`$ represents the expansion of collisional region, which is governed by another dynamics. Here, $`a(t)`$ is given by hand. Hereafter, it is assumed that the expansion occurs in $`D=1`$\- or $`D=3`$-dimension. Further, in $`D=1`$, the direction of the expansion is adopted as the $`z`$-direction. The metric tensor $`g_{\mu \nu }(t)`$, its inverse and its determinant $`g`$ are given by

$`g_{\mu \nu }(t)`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}1& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& a(t)^2& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& 0& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& 0\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& a(t)^2\end{array}\right),`$
$`g^{\mu \nu }(t)`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}1& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& 1/a(t)^2& 0& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& 0& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& 0\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& \mathrm{}& 1/a(t)^2\end{array}\right),`$
$`g`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{det}g_{\mu \nu }=(a(t)^2)^D`$ (A.2)
with $`D=1`$ or 3. Then, equations of motion in Eq.(3) are modified because the d’Alembertian $`^2/t^2^2`$, which acts on $`\overline{\phi }_a`$ and $`\eta ^a`$, is replaced by

$`\overline{\phi }_{a;\mu }^{;\mu }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{x^\mu }}\left(\sqrt{g}g^{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\phi }_a}{x^\nu }}\right)`$ (A.3)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}\left(\sqrt{g}{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\phi }_a}{t}}\right)\left(\sqrt{g}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a(t)^2}}\overline{\phi }_a\right)\right]`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\overline{\phi }_a}{t^2}}+D{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}(t)}{a(t)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\phi }_a}{t}}_D^2\overline{\phi }_a.`$
Namely, the d’Alembertian is replaced into

$$\frac{^2}{t^2}^2\frac{^2}{t^2}+D\frac{\dot{a}(t)}{a(t)}\frac{}{t}_D,$$
(A.4)
where the variable with suffix $`D(=1,3)`$ is defined as

$$f_D^2=\frac{1}{a(t)^{D1}}(f_x^2+f_y^2)+\frac{1}{a(t)^2}f_z^2.$$
(A.5)
As a result, the equations of motion we solve are modified from Eq.(3) as follows :

$`\ddot{\overline{\phi }}_a(t)+D{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}(t)}{a(t)}}\dot{\overline{\phi }}_a(t)m^2\overline{\phi }_a(t)+4\lambda \overline{\phi }_a(t)^3+12\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _𝐤^a(t)^2\overline{\phi }_a(t)}`$
$`+4\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}\left(\overline{\phi }_b(t)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌}{(2\pi )^3}\eta _𝐤^b(t)^2}\right)\overline{\phi }_a(t)h\delta _{a0}=0,`$
$`\ddot{\eta }_𝐤^a(t)+D{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}(t)}{a(t)}}\dot{\eta }_𝐤^a(t)+[k_D^2m^2+12\lambda \overline{\phi }_a(t)^2+12\lambda {\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}}\eta _𝐤^{}^a(t)^2`$
$`+4\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{ba}{}}(\overline{\phi }_b(t)^2+{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3𝒌^{}}{(2\pi )^3}}\eta _𝐤^{}^b(t)^2)]\eta _𝐤^a(t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\eta _𝐤^a(t)^3}}=0.`$
Of course, the term with the first derivative of time causes the friction and the dissipative process is realized.


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# On the NP-Completeness of Finding an Optimal Strategy in Games with Common Payoffs

## 1 Introduction

In many problems arising in distributed computing, we are free to program the agents so as to achieve a goal of the designer; thus, the agents can be viewed as pursuing a common goal. The interaction becomes a game in which the strategic aspect is of little importance, whereas the coordination aspect becomes crucial.

To give just one example, in recent years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has introduced the concept of Free Flight, which will decentralize the National Airspace System (NAS). Free Flight allows pilots, whenever practical, to choose their own route, instead of following pre-assigned routes. (See http://www.faa.gov/freeflight/ff\_ov.htm for more details.) Since a pilot may plot his own course instead of taking a pre-assigned route under Free Flight, the pilot might well want to optimize the route for his payoff function. Of course, the optimal choices will depend both on what other pilots do and on what can be viewed as Nature’s moves (e.g., the wind speed). other pilots. as players in a game,

While pilots are no longer obligated to follow routes pre-assigned by the FAA during Free Flight, they might not want to act completely independently, since there might be incentives to cooperate. For example, pilots from the same organization (e.g., airline, shipping company, etc.) might well want to coordinate their flights so as to optimize the payoff function of the organization itself, since what is optimal for a particular flight might not be the best thing to do for the organization as a whole. Indeed, in the extreme case, the pilots may have the same payoff function (the payoff function of the organization to which they belong).

This type of of situation, where the agents have a common payoff because they are members of the same team or organization (or because their payoff can be taken to be the organization’s payoff) arises frequently in distributed systems applications. In games of this sort, it turns out that there is an optimal joint strategy—one that gives all the agents at least as high a payoff (individually) as any other joint strategy. This optimal joint strategy is deterministic and is Pareto optimal, a Nash equilibrium, and a correlated equilibrium (under perhaps the most natural definition of correlated equilibrium in extensive-form games).

An obvious goal is thus to compute the optimal joint strategy. Here, unfortunately, is where the scalability concern bites. We show that the problem of computing the optimal joint strategy is NP-complete as a function of the number of nodes in the extensive-form representation of the game. (More precisely, we show that it is NP-complete to determine whether there is a joint strategy that nets the players a payoff of at least $`r`$ for a fixed rational number $`r`$.) This is true even if there are only two players in the game, each of whom moves once, after an initial move by nature. The role of nature is critical. Without the initial move by nature, it is easy to see that the problem is decidable in polynomial time, no matter how many players there are. It is also easy to see that two players are required for the lower bound; if there is just a single player, it is again easy to figure out the optimal move for that player.

These results also depend on the fact that we are considering the extensive-form representation of the game. Using the normal-form representation of the game, it is trivial to find an optimal joint strategy for the players by looking at the payoff matrix: it is just a joint strategy that nets them the best payoff. (Recall that we are considering games where the players get the same payoff.) There is no contradiction with the NP-completeness result here: the normal-form representation can be exponential in the size of the extensive-form representation.

These results form an interesting contrast to those of Gilboa and Zemel \[?\], who considered related questions in the context of games in normal form. They showed that, given a game $`G`$ and a number $`r`$, computing whether there exists a Nash equilibrium where each player gets a payoff of at least $`r`$ is NP-complete, while computing whether there exists a correlated equilibrium where each player gets at least $`r`$ is decidable in polynomial time. Note that Gilboa and Zemel are trying to determine whether there exists a Nash or correlated equilibrium where the players do well, whereas we are trying to determine whether there exists a joint strategy where the players do well. However, in our setting, there exists a joint strategy where the players do well iff there is a Nash/correlated equilibrium where the players do well.

It is also interesting to compare these results to those of Koller and Megiddo \[?\]. Like us, they consider extensive form and focus on the two-player case but they consider zero-sum games, where the players have diametrically opposite interests, whereas we consider coordination games where the players have identical interests. They show that it is NP-hard to decide whether player 1 can guarantee an expected payoff of at least $`r`$ (no matter what player 2 does), even if there are no chance moves. They show the problem is NP-complete if there are no chance moves or if player 1 has perfect recall, but need to allow player 2 to have imperfect recall. Note that since we restrict players to making one move each, they certainly have perfect recall in our setting.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we briefly review the relevant definitions and explain the difficulty of computing an optimal solution. In Section 3, we prove the main NP-completeness result of the paper. In Section 4 we offer some concluding remarks.

## 2 Preliminaries

We first describe the games of interest to us in somewhat nonstandard notation (which nevertheless seems to us fairly natural and appropriate for our application). We then describe the easy conversions to normal and extensive form. For us, an $`n`$-player game, $`G_n`$, is a $`2n+3`$-tuple $`(W,A_1,\mathrm{},A_n,O_1,\mathrm{},O_n,\text{Pr},\text{obs},\text{pay})`$ such that

* $`W`$ is the set of possible worlds,
* $`A_i`$ is the set of possible actions of agent $`i`$,
* $`O_i`$ is the set of possible observations of agent $`i`$,
* Pr is the probability distribution on $`W`$,
* $`\text{obs}(w,i)O_i`$ is the observation agent $`i`$ makes in world $`w`$, and
* $`\text{pay}(w,(a_1,\mathrm{},a_n))𝐑^n`$ is the joint payoff of the joint action $`(a_1,\mathrm{},a_n)`$ in world $`w`$.

Note that each world $`wW`$ determines the observation each agent makes (via obs) and the joint payoff given any joint action (via pay). We assume that the game (i.e., the tuple) is common knowledge among the agents. Intuitively, if $`\text{pay}(w,(a_1,\mathrm{},a_n))=(b_1,\mathrm{},b_n)`$, then $`b_i`$ is the payoff to agent $`i`$ if the world is $`w`$ and agent $`j`$ performs action $`a_j`$, $`j=1,\mathrm{},n`$. A game with common payoffs is one where all joint payoffs have the form $`(b,\mathrm{},b)`$: i.e., each agent gets the same payoff.

Each agent $`i`$ decides what action to take based on his observation and his strategy. Formally, a strategy for agent $`i`$ is a function from $`O_i`$ to $`A_i`$. That is, for each observation, the strategy prescribes an action. (Note that this is a deterministic strategy. In general, randomized strategies are also possible. However, as we show shortly, in the games with common payoffs that we are interested in, there is no loss of generality in considering only on deterministic strategies.) A joint strategy is an $`n`$-tuple $`(S_1,\mathrm{},S_n)`$ such that $`S_i`$ is the strategy for agent $`i`$. (For brevity, we will sometimes write $`(x_1,\mathrm{},x_k)`$ as $`\stackrel{}{x}`$.) Given a joint strategy $`\stackrel{}{S}`$, we can compute its expected joint payoff

$$𝐄^{\text{pay}}(\stackrel{}{S})=\underset{wW}{}\text{Pr}(w)\text{pay}(w,(S_1(\text{obs}(w,1)),\mathrm{},S_n(\text{obs}(w,n)))).$$

Clearly such a game can be easily converted to extensive form. Nature makes the first move, by choosing a world. Then agent 1 moves (by choosing an action in $`A_1`$), agent 2 moves (by choosing an action in $`A_2`$), and so on. Agent $`i`$ cannot distinguish two nodes $`n`$ and $`n^{}`$ in the game tree if nature’s move in the path to $`n`$ is $`w`$, nature’s move in the path to $`n^{}`$ is $`w^{}`$, and $`\text{obs}(w,i)=\text{obs}(w^{},i)`$. That is, agent $`i`$’s information sets are determined by the $`\text{obs}(,i)`$. Note that the size of the game tree in the extensive-form representation is essentially the same as the size of the description of the pay function. Thus, the conversion from the representation that we have chosen to the extensive-form representation is polynomial.

It is also easy to convert a game to normal form, by describing the matrix of expected payoffs for each joint strategy. However, in general, this conversion is exponential. For example, it is easy to construct a two-player game where $`|W|=n^2`$, $`|O_1|=|O_2|=n`$, and $`|A_1|=|A_2|=n`$. The description of this game is quadratic in $`n`$, and the game tree has $`4n^2`$ nodes. However, since a strategy for player $`i`$ is a function $`O_i`$ to $`A_i`$, there are $`2^n`$ strategies for each player, and the normal-form representation of the game is of size exponential in $`n`$.

As is well known, finite games always have Pareto optimal joint strategies and always have strategies that are in Nash equilibrium (if we allow randomized strategies). However, in general, the set of Pareto optimal strategies may be disjoint from the strategies in Nash equilibrium. This is not the case with common payoffs. Indeed, with common payoffs, $``$ is a linear (pre)ordering, so there is a joint strategy with the highest expected (joint) payoff. (There may be more than one, since there could be ties.) Thus, there is always a deterministic joint strategy that dominates every joint strategy (with respect to the $``$ ordering); such a joint strategy is a fortiori Pareto optimal and a Nash equilibrium, since no agent can do (strictly) better with any other joint strategy. Moreover, since the payoff of a randomized strategy is a convex combination of the payoffs of deterministic strategies, there can be no randomized strategy with a higher payoff. Thus, in games with common payoffs, a (deterministic) joint strategy with highest expected payoff is both a Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimal.

We are interested in characterizing the difficulty of computing the optimal strategy. To make this a decision problem, we consider the problem of deciding whether the optimal strategy gives a payoff of at least $`r`$. As we said in the introduction, we show that this problem is NP-complete for our representation (and hence the extensive-form representation) of the game. Why should it be so hard?

Clearly, it is trivial in the case of normal-form games: we simply scan the possible payoffs and find whether there is one that gives an expected payoff of at least $`r`$. However, since the normal-form representation is exponential in the size of the extensive-form representation, this will not help. If there were no chance moves, the problem would also be trivial. We simply scan the payoffs; if there is one with a payoff of at least $`r`$, the answer is yes, since the players can just play the strategy that puts them on this path. However, with chance moves, this approach will not work, since we must take nature’s move into account. This turns out to be hard, even if nature has only polynomially many possible moves.

## 3 The NP-Completeness Result

We now show the problem of determining the optimal strategy in a game with common payoffs is NP-complete. For simplicity, we restrict to two-player games. It will be clear from the proof that the result holds for arbitrary $`n`$-player games. For technical reasons, we further restrict to games whose probabilities and payoffs are rational numbers, and that the rational number $`\frac{p}{q}`$ is represented by pairs of integers $`(p,q)`$, where $`q>0`$. (This ensures that the games are finitely described, so that we can finish reading their descriptions in finite amount of time. If we are truly pedantic, we should actually fix an encoding of the games, but we will not get into such tedious details. Readers not familiar with NP-completeness results and the techniques by which they are established may wish to consult \[Garey and Johnson 1979\] for an introduction.) If the game is a common payoff game, we write $`\text{pay}(w,(a_1,\mathrm{},a_n))=p`$, where $`p`$ is the common payoff. We then take $`𝐄^{\text{pay}}(\stackrel{}{S})`$ to be a single number, rather than a tuple (all of whose components are identical).

The problem of finding the optimal strategy is an optimization problem. So that it fits into the standard framework of complexity classes, we convert it to a decision problem:

> * Given a two-player game (with common payoff), is there a joint strategy $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ such that $`𝐄^{\text{pay}}(\stackrel{}{S})1`$?111Of course, there is nothing special about the choice of 1 here. The same result holds for an arbitrary (rational) $`r`$ or if we take $`r`$ as part of the input. In general, for hardness results, it suffices to focus on a special case.

The following theorem shows that UTIL is NP-complete.

###### Theorem 3.1

: UTIL is NP-complete.

Proof: UTIL is clearly in NP, since it suffices to guess a joint strategy and verify that the expected joint payoff is indeed at least $`1`$. To show that UTIL is NP-hard, we reduce 3SAT to UTIL. Recall that an instance of 3SAT consists of a Boolean formula which is a conjunction of clauses, each of which is a disjunction of three literals, each of which is either a (Boolean) variable or the negation of a (Boolean) variable. An instance of UTIL is simply a (finite) two-player game (with common payoff). A positive instance of 3SAT is a formula (of 3SAT) which is satisfiable (i.e., there is a truth assignment that satisfies all the clauses) while a positive instance of UTIL is a (finite) two-player game (with common payoff) for which there exists a joint strategy whose expected payoff is at least $`1`$. Recall that to show that 3SAT reduces to UTIL, we need to give a polynomial-time transformation $`f`$ that maps instances of 3SAT to instances of UTIL such that $`\phi `$ is a positive instance of 3SAT iff $`f(\phi )`$ is a positive instance of UTIL.

Let $`\phi `$ be an instance of 3SAT with $`n`$ clauses. Let $`n`$ be the number of clauses in $`\phi `$ and let $`m`$ be the number of variables in $`\phi `$. (Note that $`m3n`$, since each clause contains at most three variables.) Let $`z_1,\mathrm{},z_m`$ be the variables and $`C_1,\mathrm{},C_n`$ be the clauses. Thus $`\phi =C_1\mathrm{}C_n`$, where $`C_i=(\mathrm{}_{i,1}\mathrm{}_{i,2}\mathrm{}_{i,3})`$ is a clause, where $`\mathrm{}_{i,j}`$ is a literal. If $`\mathrm{}_{i,j}=z_k`$ or $`\mathrm{}_{i,j}=\neg z_k`$, we say that $`z_k`$ is the variable associated with $`\mathrm{}_{i,j}`$; we denote the variable associated with a literal $`\mathrm{}`$ by $`v(\mathrm{})`$.

Basically, the game proceeds as follows: nature chooses a clause $`C_i`$ and literal $`\mathrm{}_{i,j}`$ in that clause. Each of the $`3n`$ choices of nature is equally likely. Player 1 observes the variable $`v(\mathrm{}_{i,j})`$ associated with the literal chosen by nature, and must then choose a truth value for that variable. Note that a strategy for player 1 is a truth assignment. Optimal play by player 1 will amount to choosing a truth assignment that satisfies $`\phi `$. Player 2 observes the clause $`C_j`$ chosen by nature and must choose a literal in that clause. Intuitively, this should be a literal that evaluates to $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ in the truth assignment chosen by player 1. The players get a payoff of 3 if the literal chosen by player 2 is the same as the one chosen by nature and it evaluates to $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ under the truth value for the variable chosen by player 1; otherwise they get 0.

Notice that the maximum expected payoff the players can get in this game is 1, since for each clause, in exactly one of the three worlds corresponding to that clause, player 2’s choice will match nature’s choice. In the $`n`$ worlds where player 2’s choice and nature’s choice match, the players can get a payoff of 3 if the player 2’s choice evaluates to true under player 1’s truth assignment. In all other worlds, they get a payoff of 0. Moreover, if $`\phi `$ is satisfiable, there is a joint strategy that gives the players an expected payoff of 1. Player 1 chooses a truth assignment $`\alpha `$ that satisfies $`\phi `$ (so that when player 1 observes the variable $`z`$, he plays $`\alpha (z)`$) and player 2, when given clause $`C_i`$, chooses a literal $`j`$ in $`C_i`$ that evaluates to true under truth assignment $`\alpha `$. On the other hand, if $`\phi `$ is not satisfiable, there is no joint strategy that nets an expected payoff of 1, since for each truth assignment chosen by player 1, there is at least one clause where no literals are satisfied.

More formally, let $`f(\phi )`$ be the following game:

* $`W=\{w_{i,j}:1in`$ and $`1j3\}`$ (the world $`w_{i,j}`$ corresponds to the literal $`\mathrm{}_{i,j}`$),
* $`A_1=\{\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞},\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}\}`$,
* $`A_2=\{1,2,3\}`$,
* $`O_1=\{z_1,\mathrm{},z_m\}`$,
* $`O_2=\{C_1,\mathrm{},C_n\}`$, and
* $`\text{Pr}(w_{i,j})=\frac{1}{3n}`$ for all $`i,j`$.
* $`\text{obs}(w_{i,j},1)=v(\mathrm{}_{i,j})`$ and $`\text{obs}(w_{i,j},2)=C_i`$; that is, in world $`w_{i,j}`$, the observation of agent 1 is $`v(\mathrm{}_{i,j})`$ and the observation of agent 2 is $`C_i`$.
* pay is defined as follows:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\text{pay}(w_{i,j},(\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞},j^{}))\hfill & =& \{\begin{array}{cc}3\hfill & \text{if }j=j^{}\text{ and }\mathrm{}_{i,j}=v(\mathrm{}_{i,j})\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ & & \\ \text{pay}(w_{i,j},(\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞},j^{}))\hfill & =& \{\begin{array}{cc}3\hfill & \text{if }j=j^{}\text{ and }\mathrm{}_{i,j}=\neg v(\mathrm{}_{i,j})\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}\hfill \end{array}$$

Note that the size of $`f(\phi )`$ is linear in the number of clauses, so it is easy to implement $`f`$ in polynomial time.

As an example, let $`\phi =(z_1\neg z_2z_3)(z_2z_4\neg z_1)`$. Then $`f(\phi )=(W,A_1,A_2,O_1,O_2,\text{Pr},\text{obs},\text{pay})`$, where

* $`W=\{w_{1,1},w_{1,2},w_{1,3},w_{2,1},w_{2,2},w_{2,3}\}`$,
* $`A_1=\{\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞},\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}\}`$,
* $`A_2=\{1,2,3\}`$,
* $`O_1=\{z_1,z_2,z_3,z_4\}`$,
* $`O_2=\{(z_1\neg z_2z_3),(z_2z_4\neg z_1)\}`$, and
* $`\text{Pr}(w_{i,j})=\frac{1}{6}`$.
* obs is defined as follows:

+ $`\text{obs}(w_{1,1},1)=z_1`$, $`\text{obs}(w_{1,2},1)=z_2`$, $`\text{obs}(w_{1,3},1)=z_3`$,
    $`\text{obs}(w_{2,1},1)=z_2`$, $`\text{obs}(w_{2,2},1)=z_4`$, $`\text{obs}(w_{2,3},1)=z_1`$
    + $`\text{obs}(w_{1,},2)=(z_1\neg z_2z_3)`$,
    $`\text{obs}(w_{2,},2)=(z_2z_4\neg z_1)`$
* pay is defined as follows:

|  | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| $`\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|  | $`w_{1,1}`$ | | |

|  | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| $`\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}`$ | 0 | 3 | 0 |
|  | $`w_{1,2}`$ | | |

|  | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| $`\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|  | $`w_{1,3}`$ | | |

|  | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| $`\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|  | $`w_{2,1}`$ | | |

|  | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| $`\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|  | $`w_{2,2}`$ | | |

|  | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| $`\mathrm{𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞}`$ | 0 | 0 | 3 |
|  | $`w_{2,3}`$ | | |

As discussed earlier, it is easy to see that there is a joint strategy that gives the players an expected payoff of 1 in this game iff $`\phi `$ is satisfiable. Thus $`\phi `$ is a positive instance of 3SAT iff $`f(\phi )`$ is a positive instance of UTIL, so we are done.

Although we restricted to two-player games in Theorem 3.1, it should be clear that the analogous problem is also NP-complete for $`n`$-player games. The upper bound is clear, since it suffices to guess a joint strategy just as before. And it is easy to modify our lower bound proof to deal with $`n`$-player games; we leave details to the reader.

There is one technical point worth observing. Say that player $`i`$ considers $`w_j`$ possible in $`w_k`$ iff $`\text{obs}(w_k,i)=\text{obs}(w_j,i)`$ (i.e., player $`i`$ makes the same observation in both worlds). Intuitively, if a player considers many worlds possible, he has a lot of uncertainty. Note that in the game constructed in the proof of Theorem 3.1, player 2 considers only three worlds possible in any given world (since there are only three literals in each clause) while player 1 may consider many worlds possible in some worlds (since a variable may appear in many clauses). Is it necessary for one of the players to have much uncertainty for our result to hold? It turns out that the problem remains NP-complete even if player 1 considers at most three worlds possible in each world as well. The reason that player 1 may consider many worlds possible is because a variable may occur in many clauses. It is easy to convert a formula $`\phi `$ in which a variable may occur many times to a formula $`\phi ^{}`$ in which each variable occurs in at most three clauses such that $`\phi ^{}`$ is satisfiable iff $`\phi `$ is satisfiable and $`\phi ^{}`$ can be constructed in polynomial time. (This can be done via a technique very similar to the reduction of SAT to 3SAT.) Thus the problem remains NP-complete even if both players consider at most three worlds possible in each world. While we know that 2SAT is in P and that SAT restricted to formulas in which each variable occurs at most twice is in P, we have not investigated whether UTIL remains NP-complete if both players consider at most two worlds possible in each world. Clearly if both players consider only one world possible (i.e., they have perfect information), then we can find the optimal joint strategy in linear time.

## 4 Conclusion

We have shown that the problem of determining whether there is a joint strategy that nets at least $`r`$ in a common payoff game in extensive form is NP complete, even if the there are only two players, each of whom makes only one move (following a move by nature). Essentially the same argument shows that it is NP-complete to find a strategy that is within a fixed fraction of optimal. Thus, we cannot even find approximately optimal strategies in polynomial time. What does this say about problems such as Free Flight? Should we necessarily give up on finding optimal strategies? Recent successes in finding solutions to NP-complete problems \[Hogg, Huberman, and Williams 1996, Monasson, Zecchina, Kirkpatrick, Selman, and Troyansky 1999\] suggest that there may be some reason to hope; NP-complete problems may not be so infeasible in practice. Of course, further research needs to be done to see if problems such as Free Flight can in fact be represented in a reasonable way as a game that is in practice soluble.

## Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ken Birman for bringing Free Flight to our attention, and an associate editor of the journal for a very thoughtful review, and many useful suggestions for improving the paper.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The AdS/CFT correspondence  suggests duality between theories of gravity in the bulk $`AdS_d`$ space and $`d1`$ dimensional conformal theories at the boundary of $`AdS_d`$. Some time ago a consistent theory of interacting massless fields of all spins in $`AdS_4`$ was developed  (see also  for reviews and more references). As the higher spin gauge theory contains gravity and supergravity one may speculate that it should have some conformal dual theory exhibiting the infinite-dimensional $`AdS_4`$ higher spin symmetries as $`3d`$ conformal higher spin symmetries. In fact, the $`3d`$ conformal higher spin symmetry was identified long ago  with the $`AdS_4`$ higher spin algebra , thus suggesting the higher spin AdS/CFT correspondence. In the same reference  the set of $`3d`$ conformal higher spin gauge fields associated with the conformal higher spin algebra was introduced. However, $`3d`$ higher spin gauge fields do not propagate, i.e. their own dynamics is topological333The terminology “higher spin” is therefore somewhat sloppy. It means that the higher spin gauge fields and symmetry parameters are tensors of higher ranks.. To find a nontrivial boundary conformal theory one has to realize the $`3d`$ conformal higher spin symmetries on some matter fields. This is the goal of the present paper. We show that the conformal higher spin symmetry admits a natural realization on the $`3d`$ massless scalar and spinor. This realization is given in terms of an auxiliary Fock space dual to the singleton representation in the unitary Fock space  by a certain Bogolyubov transform. Let us note that the suggested realization is different from that used to describe $`3d`$ higher spin theories in .

## 2 3d Conformal Higher Spin Algebra

Extending the usual correspondence between conformal symmetries in $`d`$ dimensions and AdS symmetries in $`d+1`$ dimensions, $`3d`$ conformal higher spin superalgebras were identified in  with the $`4d`$ AdS higher spin algebras  according to the following construction. Consider the oscillators $`\widehat{a}_\alpha `$ and $`\widehat{a}^{+\beta }`$ with the commutation relations

$$[\widehat{a}_\alpha ,\widehat{a}^{+\beta }]=\delta _\alpha ^\beta ,[\widehat{a}_\alpha ,\widehat{a}_\beta ]=[\widehat{a}^{+\alpha },\widehat{a}^{+\beta }]=0,$$
(2.1)
where $`\alpha ,\beta =1,2`$. The isomorphism $`so(3,2)sp(4,)`$ allows one to use symplectic realization for $`3d`$ conformal (and $`AdS_4`$) symmetries. The algebra $`sp(4,)`$ admits the standard oscillator realization in terms of bilinears of the oscillators (2.1). The isomorphism $`so(3,2)sp(4,)`$ is expressed by the relations

$$_{nm}=\frac{1}{2}ϵ_{nmk}\sigma ^{k\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}_{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{\beta },_\alpha {}_{}{}^{\beta }=\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{a}_\alpha \widehat{a}^{+\beta }+\widehat{a}^{+\beta }\widehat{a}_\alpha )\frac{1}{4}\delta _\alpha ^\beta (\widehat{a}_\gamma \widehat{a}^{+\gamma }+\widehat{a}^{+\gamma }\widehat{a}_\gamma ),$$

$$𝒫_n=\sigma _n{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }𝒫_{\alpha \beta }^{},𝒫_{\alpha \beta }=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{a}_\alpha \widehat{a}_\beta ,$$
(2.2)
$$𝒦_n=\sigma _n{}_{\alpha \beta }{}^{}𝒦_{}^{\alpha \beta },𝒦^{\alpha \beta }=\frac{1}{2}\widehat{a}^{+\alpha }\widehat{a}^{+\beta },$$

$$𝒟=\frac{1}{4}(\widehat{a}_\alpha \widehat{a}^{+\alpha }+\widehat{a}^{+\alpha }\widehat{a}_\alpha ).$$

Here $`n,m=0,1,2`$ are fiber indices which are raised and lowered by the mostly minus Minkowski metric $`\eta _{nm}`$ and $`\sigma _n{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }=\sigma _n{}_{}{}^{\beta \alpha }=(I,\tau _1,\tau _3)^{\alpha \beta }`$ where $`\tau _1^{\alpha \beta },\tau _3^{\alpha \beta }`$ are the Pauli matrices. Spinorial indices $`\alpha ,\beta `$ are raised and lowered by $`ϵ_{\alpha \beta }=ϵ_{\beta \alpha }(ϵ_{12}=ϵ^{12}=1)`$ as $`c^\alpha =ϵ^{\alpha \beta }c_\beta ,c_\beta =ϵ_{\alpha \beta }c^\alpha `$ ($`ϵ_{\alpha \beta }`$ is the symplectic form of $`sp(2,)so(2,1)`$). $`\sigma _n^{\alpha \beta }`$ satisfy the following identities

$$\sigma _n{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }\sigma _{m}^{}{}_{\alpha \beta }{}^{}=2\eta _{nm},\sigma _n{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }\sigma _{}^{n}{}_{\alpha ^{}\beta ^{}}{}^{}=\delta _\alpha ^{}^\alpha \delta _\beta ^{}^\beta +\alpha \beta ,$$
(2.3)
$$\sigma _n{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}\sigma _{m}^{}{}_{}{}^{\beta \gamma }=\eta _{nm}ϵ^{\alpha \gamma }ϵ_{nmk}\sigma ^{k\alpha \gamma }.$$

$`_\alpha ^\beta `$, $`𝒫_{\alpha \beta }`$, $`𝒦^{\alpha \beta }`$ and $`𝒟`$ identify, respectively, with the generators of the Lorentz rotations, Poincare translations, special conformal transformations and dilatations. The $`N=2`$ supersymmetric extension $`osp(2|4,)`$ of $`sp(4,)`$ admits the following useful realization . One extends (2.1) by adding a new generating element $`\widehat{k}`$ satisfying the relations

$`\widehat{k}^2=\widehat{1},\{\widehat{k},\widehat{a}_\alpha \}=\{\widehat{k},\widehat{a}^{+\alpha }\}=0.`$ (2.4)
The supergenerators $`𝒬_{j\alpha }`$, $`𝒮_j^\alpha `$ and the $`u(1)`$ charge $`𝒥`$ are

$$𝒬_{j\alpha }=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(i\widehat{k})^j\widehat{a}_\alpha ,𝒮_j{}_{}{}^{\alpha }=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(i\widehat{k})^j\widehat{a}^{+\alpha },j=0\text{or}1,$$
(2.5)
$$𝒥=\frac{1}{4i}\widehat{k}.$$
(2.6)
Let the (associative) enveloping algebra of the relations (2.1), (2.4) be denoted $`AK_2`$. The higher spin Lie superalgebra $`hgl(1;1|4)`$ is defined as the same linear space endowed with the product law defined via the (anti)commutators in $`AK_2`$, $`[\widehat{f},\widehat{g}]_\pm =\widehat{f}\widehat{g}(1)^{\pi (\widehat{f})\pi (\widehat{g})}\widehat{g}\widehat{f}`$. The canonical $`Z_2`$ grading chosen in accordance with the standard relation between spin and statistics counts oddness of a number of spinor indices

$$\widehat{f}(\widehat{a}^+,\widehat{a},\widehat{k})=(1)^{\pi (\widehat{f})}\widehat{f}(\widehat{a}^+,\widehat{a},\widehat{k}).$$
(2.7)
Left Fock module of the algebras $`hgl(1;1|4)`$ and $`AK_2`$ can be defined by the relations

$$\widehat{a}_\alpha |0=0,\widehat{k}|0=|0.$$
(2.8)
The basis vectors are

$$\widehat{a}^{+\alpha _1}\mathrm{}\widehat{a}^{+\alpha _l}|0.$$
(2.9)
In practice, instead of working with the operator realization of the algebra $`AK_2`$, it is convenient to use its star product version

$$(fg)(a^+,a)=\frac{1}{\pi ^4}d^2ud^2vd^2u^+d^2v^+\mathrm{exp}(2v_\alpha u^{+\alpha }2u_\alpha v^{+\alpha })f(a^++u^+,a+u)g(a^++v^+,a+v),$$
(2.10)
with $`f(a^+,a)`$ and $`g(a^+,a)`$ being functions (polynomials or formal power series) of the commuting variables $`a^{+\alpha }`$ and $`a_\beta `$.444The integral is defined so that $`\frac{1}{\pi ^2}d^2vd^2u^+\mathrm{exp}(2v_\alpha u^{+\alpha })=\frac{1}{\pi ^2}d^2ud^2v^+\mathrm{exp}(2u_\alpha v^{+\alpha })=1`$ and    $`{\displaystyle d^2vd^2u^+\frac{}{v_\alpha }\left(\mathrm{exp}(2v_\alpha u^{+\alpha })f(v,u^+)\right)}={\displaystyle d^2vd^2u^+\frac{}{u_\alpha ^+}\left(\mathrm{exp}(2v_\alpha u^{+\alpha })f(v,u^+)\right)}=`$    $`{\displaystyle d^2ud^2v^+\frac{}{u_\alpha }\left(\mathrm{exp}(2u_\alpha v^{+\alpha })g(u,v^+)\right)}={\displaystyle d^2ud^2v^+\frac{}{v_\alpha ^+}\left(\mathrm{exp}(2u_\alpha v^{+\alpha })g(u,v^+)\right)}=0`$  for any polynomials $`f(v,u^+)`$ and $`g(u,v^+)`$. If someone prefers a definition in terms of oscillating exponentials, this can easily be achieved by an appropriate redefinition of the variables.

This formula describes the associative algebra with the defining relations

$`[a_\alpha ,a^{+\beta }]_{}=\delta _\alpha ^\beta ,`$
$`[a_\alpha ,a_\beta ]_{}=[a^{+\alpha },a^{+\beta }]_{}=0.`$ (2.11)
The star product defined this way describes the product of symmetrized polynomials of oscillators in terms of symbols of operators and realizes the subalgebra $`A_2AK_2`$ spanned by the $`\widehat{k}`$ \- independent elements. The full algebra $`AK_2`$ is defined for the functions of the form $`f(a^+,a,k)=f_0(a^+,a)+f_1(a^+,a)k`$ by the formula (2.10) along with

$`kf(a^+,a,k)=f(a^+,a,k)k=f(a^+,a,k)k,kk=1.`$ (2.12)
The algebra $`AK_2`$ admits the involution555Recall that involution is an involutive semilinear antiautomorphism, i.e. $`\mu (fg)=\mu (g)\mu (f)`$, $`\mu ^2=1`$, $`\mu (\alpha f)=\overline{\alpha }\mu (f)`$ ($`\overline{\alpha }`$ is complex conjugated to $`\alpha `$). A conjugation is an involutive semilinear automorphism, i.e. $`\sigma (fg)=\sigma (f)\sigma (g)`$, $`\sigma ^2=1`$, $`\sigma (\alpha f)=\overline{\alpha }\sigma (f)`$. Any conjugation $`\sigma `$ singles out a real form of a complex algebra by the condition $`\sigma (f)=f`$. $`\mu `$ defined by the relations

$$\mu (a_\alpha )=ia_\alpha ,\mu (a^{+\alpha })=ia^{+\alpha },\mu (k)=k.$$
(2.13)
Any involution $`\mu `$ of an associative algebra $`A`$ induces a conjugation

$$\sigma (f)=(i)^{\pi (f)}\mu (f)$$
(2.14)
of the Lie superalgebra $`L_A`$ built from $`A`$ by virtue of (anti)commutators. The algebra $`hu(1;1|4)`$ is the real form of the algebra $`hgl(1;1|4)`$ singled out by the conjugation (2.14), i.e. a generic element of $`hu(1;1|4)`$ $`f^{}(a^+,a,k)=f_0^{}(a^+,a)+f_1^{}(a^+,a)k`$ satisfies

$$f_0^{}(a^+,a)=(i)^{\pi (f_0^{})}\overline{f_0^{}(ia^+,ia)},f_1^{}(a^+,a)=(i)^{\pi (f_1^{})}\overline{f_1^{}(ia^+,ia)},$$
(2.15)
where bar denotes the complex conjugation of the power series expansion coefficients. Note that the superconformal generators (2.2), (2.5), (2.6) satisfy the reality conditions $`\sigma (f)=f`$ and thus belong to $`hu(1;1|4)`$.

Fock representation of $`AK_2`$ is its left module $`F^l`$ spanned by the vectors of the form

$$f|00|,$$
(2.16)
where $`|00|`$ is the projector to the vacuum space. It is well-known (see e.g. ) that Fock projectors admit the exponential realization in the star product algebra. The Fock vacuum satisfying (2.8) is

$$|00|=2(1+k)\mathrm{exp}(2a_\alpha a^{+\alpha }).$$
(2.17)
Indeed, it is easy to see that

$$a_\alpha |00|=|00|a^{+\alpha }=0,k|00|=|00|k=|00|,|00||00|=|00|.$$
(2.18)
The right Fock module $`F^r`$ of $`AK_2`$ is spanned by the vectors $`|00|f.`$ The important properties of the Fock vacuum $`|00|`$ are that it is Lorentz invariant

$$_\alpha {}_{}{}^{\beta }|00|=|00|_\alpha {}_{}{}^{\beta }=0$$
(2.19)
and has the definite conformal weight 1/2

$$𝒟|00|=|00|𝒟=\frac{1}{2}|00|.$$
(2.20)
Note, that the $`\mu `$-conjugated Fock module $`\mu (|00|)=2(1+k)\mathrm{exp}(2a_\alpha a^{+\alpha })`$ is different from $`|00|`$. Moreover, it belongs to a distinct sector of the star product algebra because $`|00|\mu (|00|)=\mathrm{}`$. This fact is not important from the perspective of the present paper in which only free fields are considered (i.e., matter field modules are not multiplied), but it should be taken into account when thinking of a nonlinear theory describing interactions that would exhibit higher spin conformal symmetries.

## 3 Conformally Invariant Vacua

Let $`\omega (x)`$ be a 1-form taking values in the higher spin algebra $`AK_2`$, i.e. $`\omega `$ is the generating function of the conformal higher spin gauge fields

$$\omega (x)=\underset{q=0,1}{}\underset{l,r=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{l!r!}\omega _q(x)_{\alpha _1\mathrm{}\alpha _l,}{}_{}{}^{\beta _1\mathrm{}\beta _r}a_{}^{+\alpha _1}\mathrm{}a^{+\alpha _l}a_{\beta _1}\mathrm{}a_{\beta _r}(k)^q.$$
(3.1)
The zero-curvature equation

$$d\omega =\omega \omega $$
(3.2)
is invariant under the higher spin conformal gauge transformations

$$\delta \omega =dϵ[\omega ,ϵ]_{},$$
(3.3)
where $`ϵ(a^+,a,k|x)`$ is an infinitesimal gauge symmetry parameter and $`d=dx^{\underset{¯}{n}}\frac{}{x^{\underset{¯}{n}}}`$ (underlined indices $`\underset{¯}{m}`$, $`\underset{¯}{n}=0,1,2`$ are used for the components of differential forms). Any vacuum solution $`\omega _0`$ of the equation (3.2) breaks the local higher spin symmetry to its stability subalgebra with the infinitesimal parameters $`ϵ_0(a^+,a,k|x)`$ satisfying the equation

$$dϵ_0[\omega _0,ϵ_0]_{}=0.$$
(3.4)
The consistency of this equation is guaranteed by (3.2).

Locally, the equation (3.2) admits a pure gauge solution

$$\omega _0=g^1dg.$$
(3.5)
Here $`g(a^+,a,k|x)`$ is some invertible element of the algebra $`AK_2`$, i.e. $`g^1g=gg^1=1`$. For $`\omega _0`$ (3.5) one finds that the generic solution of (3.4) is

$$ϵ_0(x)=g^1(x)\xi g(x),$$
(3.6)
where $`\xi (a^+,a,k)=\xi _0(a^+,a)+\xi _1(a^+,a)k`$ is an arbitrary $`x`$–independent element playing a role of the initial data for the equation (3.4)

$$ϵ_0(a^+,a,k|x)|_{x=x_0}=\xi (a^+,a,k)$$
(3.7)
for such a point $`x_0`$ that $`g(x_0)=1`$. Therefore $`hu(1;1|4)`$ is indeed the global symmetry algebra that leaves invariant the vacuum solution. It contains the $`N=2`$ global conformal supersymmetry algebra spanned by the generators (2.2), (2.5), (2.6).

As usual, the gravitational fields (i.e., frame and Lorentz connection) are associated with the generators of translations and Lorentz rotations in the Poincare or AdS subalgebras of the conformal algebra. For the flat Minkowski space one can choose

$$\omega _0=\omega _f=\frac{1}{2}dx^{\underset{¯}{n}}\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }a_{\alpha }^{}a_\beta $$
(3.8)
thus setting the Lorentz connection equal to zero. Here $`\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }=\sigma _n^{\alpha \beta }`$. The function $`g_f`$ that gives rise to the flat gravitational field (3.8) is

$$g_f=\mathrm{exp}(\frac{x^{\alpha \beta }}{2}a_\alpha a_\beta ),$$
(3.9)
where we use the notation

$$x^{\alpha \beta }=x^{\underset{¯}{n}}\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta },x^{\underset{¯}{n}}=\frac{1}{2}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{\alpha \beta }{}^{}x_{}^{\alpha \beta }.$$
(3.10)
Within the oscillator realization of the $`3d`$ conformal algebra (2.2), the embedding of the $`AdS_3`$ algebra $`o(2,2)o(3,2)`$ can be realized as follows

$$_\alpha {}_{}{}^{\beta }=a_\alpha a^{+\beta }\frac{1}{2}\delta _\alpha ^\beta a_\gamma a^{+\gamma },$$
(3.11)
$$𝒫_{\alpha \beta }=\frac{1}{2}(a_\alpha a_\beta +\frac{\lambda ^2}{4}a_\alpha ^+a_\beta ^+).$$

The $`AdS_3`$ gravitational fields are identified with the 1-forms taking values in the $`AdS_3`$ algebra

$$\omega _0=\omega _{AdS_3}=dx^{\underset{¯}{n}}(\frac{1}{2}e_{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }(x)(a_\alpha a_\beta +\frac{\lambda ^2}{4}a_\alpha ^+a_\beta ^+)+\omega _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}(x)(a_\alpha a^{+\beta }\frac{1}{2}\delta _\alpha ^\beta a_\gamma a^{+\gamma })),$$
(3.12)
where $`e_{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }(x)`$ and $`\omega _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}(x)`$ are, respectively, the dreibein and Lorentz connection of $`AdS_3`$. A particular choice of the $`AdS_3`$ gravitational fields that solves the vacuum equations (3.2) and corresponds to the “stereographic” coordinates of $`AdS_3`$ is

$$e_{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }=\frac{4}{(4+\lambda ^2x^2)^2}((4\lambda ^2x^2)\delta _{\underset{¯}{n}}^{\underset{¯}{k}}+4\lambda x^{\underset{¯}{m}}ϵ_{\underset{¯}{n}\underset{¯}{m}}{}_{}{}^{\underset{¯}{k}}+2\lambda ^2x_{\underset{¯}{n}}x^{\underset{¯}{k}})\sigma _{\underset{¯}{k}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta },$$
(3.13)
and

$$\omega _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}=\frac{\lambda }{2}e_{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{},$$
(3.14)
where

$$x^2=\eta ^{\underset{¯}{n}\underset{¯}{m}}x_{\underset{¯}{n}}x_{\underset{¯}{m}}=\frac{1}{2}x^{\alpha \beta }x_{\alpha \beta }.$$
(3.15)
The metric tensor of the $`AdS_3`$ is

$$g_{\underset{¯}{n}\underset{¯}{m}}=\frac{1}{2}e_{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }e_{\underset{¯}{m}\alpha \beta }^{}=16\frac{\eta _{\underset{¯}{n}\underset{¯}{m}}}{(4+\lambda ^2x^2)^2}.$$
(3.16)
Let us mention that although the metric tensor is built from $`\omega _0`$ and, therefore, is invariant under the global symmetry transformations these symmetries are not necessarily associated with the Killing vectors of the metric tensor. This is only true for the Lorentz rotations and (Poincare or AdS) translations.

It is elementary to see that the representation (3.5) for the $`AdS_3`$ vacuum fields (3.12) - (3.14) is provided with the gauge function

$$g_{AdS_3}=\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{4+\lambda ^2x^2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{x^{\alpha \beta }}{2}(a_\alpha a_\beta +\frac{\lambda ^2}{4}a_\alpha ^+a_\beta ^+\lambda a_\alpha ^+a_\beta )\right),$$
(3.17)
having the inverse

$$g_{AdS_3}^1=\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{4+\lambda ^2x^2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{x^{\alpha \beta }}{2}(a_\alpha a_\beta +\frac{\lambda ^2}{4}a_\alpha ^+a_\beta ^+\lambda a_\alpha ^+a_\beta )\right).$$
(3.18)
Note that in the flat limit $`\lambda 0`$ one recovers the flat gauge function (3.9).

## 4 $`3d`$ Conformal Field Equations

It was shown that the equations of motion for massless  and massive  fields in $`\mathrm{AdS}_3`$ admit a formulation in terms of generating functions

$$C(y|x)=\underset{l=0}{}\frac{1}{l!}C(x)_{\alpha _1\mathrm{}\alpha _l}y^{\alpha _1}\mathrm{}y^{\alpha _l}$$
(4.1)
with the auxiliary spinor variables $`y^\alpha `$. The flat limit of the free equations of motion for the scalar and spinor massless fields of  has the form

$$dC(y|x)=\frac{1}{2}dx^{\underset{¯}{n}}\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \beta }\frac{1}{y^\alpha y^\beta }C(y|x).$$
(4.2)
This equation decomposes into two independent subsystems for even functions
$`C_e(y|x)=C_e(y|x)`$ and odd functions $`C_o(y|x)=C_o(y|x)`$ which describe the massless scalar and spinor respectively.

In  the spinor variables $`y^\alpha `$ were interpreted as generating elements of the $`\mathrm{AdS}_3`$ higher spin algebra while the 0-form $`C(y|x)`$ took its values in the so-called twisted adjoint representation of this algebra. In  it was then shown that an appropriate modification of the formulation of  allows for a uniform description of both massless and massive matter fields. This formulation does not make manifest the conformal symmetries expected for the massless case, however. The key observation of this paper is that for the massless case the same equations (4.2) admit a different realization in the Fock space (2.16) that makes the higher spin conformal symmetries of the system manifest.

Let us introduce the Fock-space vector

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=C(a^+|x)|00|,C(a^+|x)=\underset{l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{l!}c_{\alpha (l)}(x)\underset{l}{\underset{}{a^{+\alpha }\mathrm{}a^{+\alpha }}},$$
(4.3)
where 0-forms $`c_{\alpha (l)}(x)`$ are totally symmetric multispinors666We follow the conventions of  convenient for the component analysis of complicated tensor structures: upper and lower indices denoted by the same letter should be first separately symmetrized and then the maximal possible number of them should be contracted; a number of indices can be indicated in brackets by writing e.g. $`\alpha (l)`$ instead of repeating $`l`$ times the index $`\alpha `$.. The system of equations

$$d|\mathrm{\Phi }\omega |\mathrm{\Phi }=0$$
(4.4)
concisely encodes Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations for the scalar field $`c(x)`$ and spinor field $`c_\alpha (x)`$ provided that the equation (3.2) that guarantees the formal consistency of (4.4) is true. Indeed, the choice $`\omega =\omega _f`$ in the form (3.8) makes the equation (4.4) equivalent to (4.2). Let us note that the equations on the component fields $`c_{\alpha (n)}(x)`$ are Lorentz and scale invariant as a consequence of the Lorentz invariance (2.19) and definite scaling (2.20) of the vacuum $`|00|`$.

Recall that, as shown in  for the $`\mathrm{AdS}_3`$ case, the meaning of the equations (4.2) is that they impose the dynamical equations on the massless matter fields identified with the rank-0 and rank-1 spinors

$$c(x)=C(0|x),$$
(4.5)
$$c_\alpha (x)=\frac{}{a^{+\alpha }}C(a^+|x)|_{a^{+\alpha }=0}$$
(4.6)
and express all highest spinors from (4.3) via higher order derivatives of $`c(x)`$ and $`c_\alpha (x)`$. In the simplest case of the flat space this can be seen as follows. Substituting $`\omega _f`$ into (4.4) we obtain

$`_{\underset{¯}{n}}c_{\alpha (l)}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \alpha }c_{\alpha (l+2)}^{}=0.`$ (4.7)
The first two equations for even $`l`$, i.e. for $`l=0`$ and $`l=2`$, are

$$_{\underset{¯}{n}}c\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \alpha }c_{\alpha (2)}^{}=0,$$
(4.8)
$$_{\underset{¯}{n}}c_{\alpha (2)}\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\alpha \alpha }c_{\alpha (4)}^{}=0.$$
(4.9)
From (4.8) we derive that $`c_{\alpha (2)}=\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}}^{}c`$. Substituting it into (4.9) and multiplying by $`\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{m}}_{\beta \beta }`$ we obtain

$$\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}\sigma _{}^{\underset{¯}{m}}{}_{\beta \beta }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}}^{}_{\underset{¯}{m}}c=c_{\alpha (2)\beta (2)}.$$
(4.10)
The condition that $`c_{\alpha (2)\beta (2)}`$ is totally symmetric is equivalent to the Klein-Gordon equation for $`c(x)`$

$$\mathrm{}c(x)=0.$$
(4.11)
The equations for all other even values of $`l`$ impose no further differential equations on $`c(x)`$ just expressing highest multispinors via the highest derivatives of the $`c(x)`$. It is straightforward to see that the resulting expression for the even part $`C_e`$ of $`C`$ acquires the form

$$C_e(a^+|x)=\underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{(2q)!}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}_1}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}\mathrm{}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}_q}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}_1}^{}\mathrm{}_{\underset{¯}{n}_q}c(x)\underset{2q}{\underset{}{a^{+\alpha }\mathrm{}a^{+\alpha }}}.$$
(4.12)
The situation with the fermion is analogous. Starting from the equation (4.7) for $`l=1`$ we obtain

$$c_{\alpha \beta (2)}=\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{\beta \beta }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}}^{}c_\alpha .$$
(4.13)
Again, the condition that the third rank multispinor $`c_{\alpha \beta (2)}`$ is symmetric implies the Dirac equation for $`c_\alpha (x)`$

$$\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}\beta }{}_{\alpha }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}}^{}c_\beta (x)=0.$$
(4.14)
All other equations for odd values of $`l`$ express highest spinors via derivatives of $`c_\alpha (x)`$. For the odd part $`C_o`$ of $`C`$ we get

$$C_o(a^+|x)=\underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{(2q+1)!}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}_1}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}\mathrm{}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}_q}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}_1}^{}\mathrm{}_{\underset{¯}{n}_q}c_\alpha (x)\underset{2q+1}{\underset{}{a^{+\alpha }\mathrm{}a^{+\alpha }}}.$$
(4.15)
We therefore conclude that, for the flat connection $`\omega _f`$, the system (4.4) is equivalent to

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{(2q)!}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}_1}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}\mathrm{}\sigma ^{\underset{¯}{n}_q}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}_{\underset{¯}{n}_1}^{}\mathrm{}_{\underset{¯}{n}_q}(c(x)+\frac{1}{2q+1}c_\alpha (x)a^{+\alpha })\underset{2q}{\underset{}{a^{+\alpha }\mathrm{}a^{+\alpha }}}|00|$$
(4.16)
along with the dynamical equations (4.11) and (4.14).

Analogously, for $`\omega _{AdS_3}`$ the system (4.4) is equivalent to the massless Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations in $`AdS_3`$

$$(g^{\underset{¯}{n}\underset{¯}{m}}D_{\underset{¯}{n}}D_{\underset{¯}{m}}\frac{3}{4}\lambda ^2)c(x)=0,$$
(4.17)
$$e^{\underset{¯}{n}\beta }{}_{\alpha }{}^{}D_{\underset{¯}{n}}^{}c_\beta (x)=0$$
(4.18)
along with

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{(2q)!}e^{\underset{¯}{n}_1}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}\mathrm{}e^{\underset{¯}{n}_q}{}_{\alpha \alpha }{}^{}D_{\underset{¯}{n}_1}^{}\mathrm{}D_{\underset{¯}{n}_q}(c(x)+\frac{1}{2q+1}c_\alpha (x)a^{+\alpha })\underset{2q}{\underset{}{a^{+\alpha }\mathrm{}a^{+\alpha }}}|00|,$$
(4.19)
where $`D_{\underset{¯}{n}}`$ is the $`AdS_3`$ Lorentz covariant derivative

$$D_{\underset{¯}{n}}c_{\alpha (l)}=_{\underset{¯}{n}}c_{\alpha (l)}+l\omega _{\underset{¯}{n}}{}_{}{}^{\beta }{}_{\alpha }{}^{}c_{\alpha (l1)\beta }^{},$$
(4.20)
$$D_{\underset{¯}{n}}e_{\underset{¯}{m}}^{\alpha \alpha }\underset{¯}{n}\underset{¯}{m}=0.$$
(4.21)
Note that, as usual, we identify massless scalar and spinor in $`AdS_3`$ with the conformal fields. With this convention, the massless scalar field in $`AdS_d`$ has a non-zero mass-like term $`m_0^2=(\lambda ^2/4)d(d2)`$ being in agreement with (4.17) for $`d=3`$.

## 5 3d Conformal Higher Spin Symmetries

The system of equations (3.2) and (4.4) is invariant under the infinite-dimensional local conformal higher spin symmetries of the form (3.3) and

$$\delta |\mathrm{\Phi }=ϵ|\mathrm{\Phi }$$
(5.1)
($`ϵ=ϵ(a^+,a,k|x)`$). Once a particular vacuum solution $`\omega =\omega _0`$ is fixed, the local higher spin symmetry (5.1) breaks down to the global higher spin symmetry (3.6). Therefore the system (4.7) and its $`AdS_3`$ analog are invariant under the infinite-dimensional algebra $`hu(1;1|4)`$ of global 3d conformal higher spin symmetries

$$\delta |\mathrm{\Phi }=ϵ_0|\mathrm{\Phi },$$
(5.2)
where $`ϵ_0`$ satisfies the equation (3.4) with the flat or $`AdS_3`$ connection (3.8) or (3.12). Once the higher components $`c_{\alpha (l)}`$ are expressed via higher derivatives of the dynamical spin zero and spin 1/2 fields by (4.16) and (4.19), this implies the invariance of the massless Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations (4.11), (4.14) and (4.17), (4.18) under the conformal higher spin symmetries. Thus, the fact that massless Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations are reformulated in the form of the flatness conditions (4.4) and zero-curvature equation (3.2) makes higher spin conformal symmetries of these equations manifest.

The $`N=2`$ conformal SUSY algebra $`osp(2|4,)`$ spanned by the elements (2.2), (2.5) and (2.6) is a finite-dimensional subalgebra of the $`3d`$ conformal higher spin symmetry algebra $`hu(1;1|4)`$. Including the $`u(1)`$ factor generated by the constant element in $`hu(1;1|4)=u(1)hsu(1;1|4)`$, $`u(1)osp(2|4,)`$ forms a maximal finite-dimensional subalgebra of $`hu(1;1|4)`$. Note that because of (4.16) or (4.19) and of the quantum-mechanical nonlocality of the star product (2.10), the higher degree of $`ϵ_0(a^+,a,k|x)`$ as a polynomial of $`a_\alpha `$ and $`a^{+\beta }`$ is the higher space-time derivatives appear in the higher spin conformal transformations. This is a particular manifestation of the well known fact that the higher spin symmetries mix higher derivatives of the dynamical fields.

The explicit form of the transformations can be obtained by the substitution of (4.16) ((4.19) in $`AdS_3`$ case) into (5.2). In practice, it is most convenient to evaluate the higher spin conformal transformations for the generating parameter

$$\xi ^j(a^+,a,k;h^+,h)=\xi \mathrm{exp}(a^{+\alpha }h_\alpha +a_\alpha h^{+\alpha })(k)^j,$$
(5.3)
where $`\xi `$ is an infinitesimal parameter and $`h_\alpha `$, $`h^{+\alpha }`$ are spinor “sources”. The polynomial symmetry parameters can be obtained via differentiation of $`\xi ^j(a^+,a,k;h^+,h)`$ with respect to $`h_\alpha `$ and $`h^{+\alpha }`$. Using (3.6), (3.17) and the star product (2.10) we obtain upon evaluation of elementary Gaussian integrals

$`ϵ_0(a^+,a,k;h^+,h|x)=\xi \mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \frac{1}{8+2\lambda ^2x^2}}(x^{\alpha \alpha }(8a_\alpha h_\alpha +4\lambda a_\alpha h_\alpha ^+4\lambda a_\alpha ^+h_\alpha 2\lambda ^2a_\alpha ^+h_\alpha ^+)+`$
$`+8a^{+\alpha }h_\alpha +8a_\alpha h^{+\alpha }+4\lambda x^2a^\alpha h_\alpha +\lambda ^3x^2a_\alpha ^+h^{+\alpha }))(k)^j.`$ (5.4)
Substitution of $`ϵ_0`$ into (5.2) gives the global higher spin conformal symmetry transformations induced by the parameter $`\xi ^j(a^+,a,k;h^+,h)`$ (5.3)

$`\delta |\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\xi \mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \frac{1}{8+2\lambda ^2x^2}}(x^{\alpha \alpha }(4h_\alpha h_\alpha \lambda ^2h_\alpha ^+h_\alpha ^+4\lambda h_\alpha a_\alpha ^+2\lambda ^2h_\alpha ^+a_\alpha ^+)+`$
$`+8a^{+\alpha }h_\alpha +\lambda ^3x^2a_\alpha ^+h^{+\alpha }+(4\lambda ^2x^2)h^{+\alpha }h_\alpha ))`$
$`C\left((1)^j\left(a^{+\alpha }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8+2\lambda ^2x^2}}(8x^{\alpha \beta }h_\beta +4\lambda x^{\alpha \beta }h_\beta ^++8h^{+\alpha }4\lambda x^2h^\alpha )\right)|x\right)|00|.`$ (5.5)
Setting $`\lambda =0`$ we obtain the flat space formula

$$\delta |\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\xi \mathrm{exp}(\frac{1}{2}x^{\alpha \alpha }h_\alpha h_\alpha +a^{+\alpha }h_\alpha +\frac{1}{2}h^{+\alpha }h_\alpha )C\left((1)^j(a^{+\alpha }+x^{\alpha \beta }h_\beta +h^{+\alpha })\right|x)|00|.$$
(5.6)
Differentiating with respect to the sources $`h_\alpha `$ and $`h^{+\alpha }`$ one derives explicit expressions for the particular global higher spin conformal transformations. For the transformations of the dynamical fields (4.5), (4.6) these expressions further simplify. For example, the bosonic transformation of the dynamical scalar in the flat space is

$$\delta c=\xi \mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{2}x^{\alpha \alpha }h_\alpha h_\alpha +\frac{1}{2}h^{+\alpha }h_\alpha \right)C\left(x^{\alpha \beta }h_\beta +h^{+\alpha }|x\right)$$
(5.7)
with (4.12) substituted into the right hand side. Let us stress that such a compact form of the higher spin conformal transformations is a result of the reformulation of the dynamical equations in the unfolded form of the covariant constancy conditions, i.e. in terms of a flat section of the Fock bundle. Note that a “brutal force” search of the higher spin conformal transformations quickly gets very complicated (especially in the $`AdS_3`$ case).

For at most quadratic conformal superalgebra generators (2.2), (2.5), (2.6) one immediately obtains in the flat space

$$_\alpha {}_{}{}^{\beta }|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=(x^{\beta \gamma }\frac{^2}{a^{+\alpha }a^{+\gamma }}+a^{+\beta }\frac{}{a^{+\alpha }}\frac{1}{2}\delta _\alpha ^\beta (x^{\gamma \gamma }\frac{^2}{a^{+\gamma }a^{+\gamma }}+a^{+\gamma }\frac{}{a^{+\gamma }}))|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$

$$𝒫_{\alpha \alpha }|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{^2}{a^{+\alpha }a^{+\alpha }}|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$

$$𝒦^{\alpha \alpha }|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\frac{1}{2}(x^{\alpha \alpha }+a^{+\alpha }a^{+\alpha }+2x^{\alpha \beta }a^{+\alpha }\frac{}{a^{+\beta }}+x^{\alpha \beta }x^{\alpha \beta }\frac{^2}{a^{+\beta }a^{+\beta }})|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$

$$𝒟|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\frac{1}{2}(1+a^{+\alpha }\frac{}{a^{+\alpha }}+x^{\alpha \alpha }\frac{^2}{a^{+\alpha }a^{+\alpha }})|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$
(5.8)
$$𝒬_{j\alpha }|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\frac{(i)^j}{\sqrt{2}}\frac{}{a^{+\alpha }}|\mathrm{\Phi }((1)^ja^+|x),$$

$$𝒮_j{}_{}{}^{\alpha }|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\frac{(i)^j}{\sqrt{2}}(a^{+\alpha }+x^{\alpha \beta }\frac{}{a^{+\beta }})|\mathrm{\Phi }((1)^ja^+|x),$$

$$𝒥|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=\frac{1}{4i}|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x).$$

Taking into account that the dynamical equations for $`|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)`$ have the form (4.2) one can replace all second derivatives in $`a^{+\alpha }`$ by the space-time derivatives. This leads to the following standard expressions

$$_{nm}|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=(x_m_nx_n_m+\frac{1}{2}ϵ_{nmk}\sigma ^{k\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}a_{}^{+\beta }\frac{}{a^{+\alpha }})|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$

$$𝒫_n|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=_n|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$
(5.9)
$$𝒦_n|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=(x_n+2x_nx^k_kx^2_n+\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{n\alpha \alpha }(a^{+\alpha }a^{+\alpha }+2x^{\alpha \beta }a^{+\alpha }\frac{}{a^{+\beta }}))|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x),$$

$$𝒟|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x)=(x^k_k+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{2}a^{+\alpha }\frac{}{a^{+\alpha }})|\mathrm{\Phi }(a^+|x).$$

For the dynamical scalar and spinor fields (4.5) and (4.6) we find the expected results

$`_{nm}c=(x_m_nx_n_m)c,`$
$`𝒫_nc=_nc,`$
$`𝒦_nc=(x_n+2x_nx^k_kx^2_n)c,`$
$`𝒟c=({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+x^k_k)c,`$ (5.10)
$`𝒬_{j\alpha }c={\displaystyle \frac{(i)^j}{\sqrt{2}}}c_\alpha ,`$
$`𝒮_j^\alpha c={\displaystyle \frac{(i)^j}{\sqrt{2}}}x^{\alpha \beta }c_\beta ,`$
$`𝒥c={\displaystyle \frac{i}{4}}c,`$
$`_{nm}c_\alpha =((x_m_nx_n_m)\delta _\alpha ^\beta +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{nmk}\sigma ^{k\beta }{}_{\alpha }{}^{})c_\beta ,`$
$`𝒫_nc_\alpha =_nc_\alpha ,`$
$`𝒦_nc_\alpha =((2x_n+2x_nx^k_kx^2_n)\delta _\alpha ^\beta ϵ_{nmk}x^m\sigma ^{k\beta }{}_{\alpha }{}^{})c_\beta ,`$
$`𝒟c_\alpha =(1+x^k_k)c_\alpha ,`$ (5.11)
$`𝒬_{j\alpha }c_\beta ={\displaystyle \frac{(i)^j}{\sqrt{2}}}\sigma ^n{}_{\alpha \beta }{}^{}_{n}^{}c,`$
$`𝒮_j^\alpha c_\beta ={\displaystyle \frac{(i)^j}{\sqrt{2}}}((1+x^k_k)\delta _\beta ^\alpha +x_n_mϵ^{nmk}\sigma _k{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{})c,`$
$`𝒥c_\alpha ={\displaystyle \frac{i}{4}}c_\alpha .`$
Note that the particular form of the dependence on the space-time coordinates $`x^{\alpha \beta }`$ originates from the choice of the gauge function (3.9). The approach we use is applicable to any other coordinate system and conformally flat background (for example, $`\mathrm{AdS}_3`$).

## 6 Field Theory - Singleton Duality Via Bogolyubov Transform

The formulation of the relativistic higher spin dynamics proposed in this paper operates in terms of the Fock module $`F`$ (2.8) defined with respect to auxiliary oscillators associated with the 3d conformal superalgebra $`osp(2|4,)`$ via (2.2), (2.5) and (2.6). This Fock module is analogous to the Fock representations of $`sp(4,)`$ identified with the Dirac singletons . The difference is that the singleton representation $`S`$ is unitary while the Fock module $`F`$ is not. In this section we show that our approach makes the duality between the two types of representations manifest by virtue of a certain Bogolyubov transform. This parallelism extends far enough. In particular, the Flato-Fronsdal theorem  that the tensor product of the two singleton representations is equivalent to the direct sum of all $`AdS_4`$ massless representations acquires a simple dynamical interpretation in the unfolded formulation of the higher spin dynamics.

The fact that the involution $`\mu `$ (2.13) maps the oscillators $`a_\alpha `$ and $`a^{+\alpha }`$ to themselves implies that the Fock module (4.3) is not unitary. This is in agreement with the fact that the vacuum $`|00|`$ is Lorentz invariant (2.19) and, as a result, the module (4.3) decomposes into the infinite sum of the finite-dimensional representations of the noncompact $`3d`$ Lorentz algebra $`o(2,1)`$ identified with the component fields $`c_{\alpha (l)}(x)`$. (Recall that noncompact algebras do not admit finite-dimensional unitary representations.)

The unitary Fock module of $`sp(4,)`$ is built in terms of the oscillators

$$[\widehat{b}_i^\pm ,\widehat{b}_j^\pm ]=0,[\widehat{b}_i^{},\widehat{b}_j^+]=\delta _{ij},i,j=1,2,$$
(6.1)
satisfying the Hermitian conjugation conditions

$$(\widehat{b}_i^\pm )^{}=\widehat{b}_i^{}.$$
(6.2)
The corresponding Fock vacuum $`|0_u0_u|`$ is defined according to

$$\widehat{b}_i^{}|0_u0_u|=0,|0_u0_u|\widehat{b}_i^+=0.$$
(6.3)
The unitary left and right Fock modules built from the vacuum $`|0_u0_u|`$ identify with the supersingleton $`S`$ and its conjugate $`\overline{S}`$, respectively. (The supersingleton $`S`$ decomposes into two irreducible representations of the $`sp(4,)`$ associated with the subspaces built from $`|0_u0_u|`$ with the aid of even and odd numbers of creation operators, called Rac and Di, respectively .)

The relationship between the two sets of oscillators is

$`\widehat{b}_j^\pm ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left(\widehat{a}_j\pm \widehat{a}^{+j}\right),`$ (6.4)
$$\widehat{a}_j=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\widehat{b}_j^++\widehat{b}_j^{}),\widehat{a}^{+j}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\widehat{b}_j^+\widehat{b}_j^{}).$$
(6.5)
The unitary Fock vacuum can be realized in terms of the star product algebra (2.10) as

$$|0_u0_u|=2(1+k)\mathrm{exp}\left(\delta ^{ij}(a_ia_ja_i^+a_j^+)\right).$$
(6.6)
We therefore conclude that, in our approach, there is a natural duality between the field-theoretical module $`F`$ used in the unfolded formulation of the 3d conformal dynamics and unitary module $`S`$.

The idea that some duality of this kind takes place has been worked out earlier  for the $`4d`$ case and is very interesting in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The new point is that it takes a simple form of the Bogolyubov transform (6.4), (6.5) in the framework of the unfolded formulation of the 3d conformal dynamics. Let us stress that the dependence on the space-time coordinates of the elements of the field $`|\mathrm{\Phi }(x)`$ is determined completely by the equation (4.4) in terms of its value at any fixed point $`x_0`$. This means that the module $`|\mathrm{\Phi }(x_0)`$ contains the complete information on the on-mass-shell dynamics of the 3d conformal fields analogously to the fact that the singleton module contains the complete information on the (on-mass-shell) quantum states of the free theory. We believe that this phenomenon is quite general and the unfolded formulation of the dynamical systems in the form of some flatness (i.e., covariant constancy or zero-curvature) conditions will make the duality between the classical and quantum description of the dynamical systems manifest for general case.

The duality between unitary and unfolded formulations of the dynamical systems exhibiting higher spin symmetries admits an interesting extension to the $`AdS_4`$ higher spin gauge theories. As shown by Flato and Fronsdal  the tensor product of singleton representations amounts to the direct sum of the unitary representations of $`sp(4,)`$ associated with the massless fields of all spins in $`AdS_4`$. In particular, a $`AdS_4`$ massless field of every spin $`s=0,1/2,1,3/2,\mathrm{}`$ appears in two copies in $`S\overline{S}`$. (See also  for the straightforward analysis). Remarkably, this is exactly the spectrum of the simplest (i.e., without non-Abelian Yang-Mills gauge symmetries) supersymmetric $`AdS_4`$ higher spin gauge theory built in  based on $`hu(1;1|4)`$. In  it was shown that this fact implies that $`hu(1;1|4)`$ admits a unitary representation to be associated with the one-particle states of the quantum higher spin gauge theory. In  it was then shown that all consistent $`4d`$ higher spin gauge theories with various Yang-Mills groups admit unitary representations associated with certain tensor products of pairs of singletons.

Now, let us follow the field-theoretical picture. A particular basis in the tensor product $`F^lF^r`$ of the left and right Fock modules is spanned by the elements of the form

$$a_{\alpha _1}^+\mathrm{}a_{\alpha _n}^+|00|a_{\beta _1}\mathrm{}a_{\beta _m}.$$
(6.7)
$`F^lF^r`$ can be identified with the algebra of endomorphisms of $`F`$. The star product algebra (2.10) also can be interpreted as the algebra of linear operators in $`F`$ and therefore it can be identified with $`F^lF^r`$.777Here we discard the normalizability issues. Note that an operator (6.7) in $`F`$ is described by the infinite matrix having a finite number of non-zero elements, while the polynomial elements of the star product algebra have the Jacobi form with an infinite number of non-zero elements but at most a finite number of non-zero diagonals. This means that a polynomial in the star product algebra is described by an infinite sum in the basis (6.7). The questions of how well defined are the corresponding infinite sums sometimes become important. The point is that the $`AdS_4`$ higher spin gauge fields are the gauge fields (1-forms) taking values in this algebra. This provides an interesting dynamical realization of the Flato-Fronsdal theorem. Moreover, it has been shown recently  that, in agreement with the AdC/CFT correspondence , the set of the $`AdS_4`$ higher spin gauge fields is in one-to-one correspondence with the set of 3d conformal higher spin currents.

The important question of the explicit form of the AdS/CFT correspondence in the framework of the higher spin gauge theories requires a more detailed analysis of the higher spin dynamics and will be considered elsewhere. One relevant issue is that the Fock-module realization of the 3d equations proposed in this paper is different from the approach to the nonlinear $`3d`$ higher spin theory given in  where the equation (4.4) was formulated in terms of the twisted adjoint representation of the $`AdS_3`$ higher spin algebra realized in terms of the smaller set of oscillators $`y^\alpha `$ according to (4.1). As the formulation of  works both for massless  and for massive matter fields  it has no manifest evidence of the conformal higher spin symmetries. The approach developed in this paper therefore raises an important problem of the search of a manifestly conformal theory describing higher spin interactions of 3d massless matter, based on the Fock modules rather than on the twisted adjoint representation. Let us note that this alternative is expected to be analogous to the realization of the 2d higher spin matter system of  originally formulated in terms of the Fock module. Also it is tempting to speculate that the resulting models may have some relationship with the models of non-commutative solitons  discussed recently in the context of the noncommutative phase of superstring theory , which are realized in terms of Fock modules with respect to the non-commutative space-time coordinates.

## Acknowledgements

M.V. would like to thank I. Bars, M. Gunaydin and E. Witten for useful discussions. This research was supported in part by INTAS, Grant No.99-1-590, the RFBR Grant No.99-02-16207 and the RFBR Grant No.00-15-96566. M.V. would like to thank the CIT-USC Center for Theoretical Physics for hospitality where some part of this work was performed.