Linear gravity from conformal symmetry

Abstract

We perform a unified systematic analysis of $d+1$ dimensional, spin $\ell$ representations of the isometry algebra of the maximally symmetric spacetimes AdS$_{d+1}$, $\mathbb{R}_{1,d}$ and dS$_{d+1}$. This allows us to explicitly construct the effective low-energy bulk equations of motion obeyed by linear fields, as the eigenvalue equation for the quadratic Casimir differential operator. We show that the bulk description of a conformal family is given by the Fierz-Pauli system of equations. For $\ell = 2$ this is a massive gravity theory, while for $\ell = 2$ conserved currents we obtain Einstein gravity and covariant gauge fixing conditions. This analysis provides a direct algebraic derivation of the familiar AdS holographic dictionary at low energies, with analogous results for Minkowski and de Sitter spacetimes.