Aiming at nonexperts, the key mechanisms of higher-spin extensions of ordinary gravities in four dimensions and higher are explained. An overview of various no-go theorems for low-energy scattering of massless particles in flat spacetime is given. In doing so, a connection between the S-matrix and the Lagrangian approaches is made, exhibiting their relative advantages and weaknesses, after which potential loopholes for nontrivial massless dynamics are highlighted. Positive yes-go results for non-Abelian cubic higher-derivative vertices in constantly curved backgrounds are reviewed. Finally, how higher-spin symmetry can be reconciled with the equivalence principle in the presence of a cosmological constant leading to the Fradkin-Vasiliev vertices and Vasiliev's higher-spin gravity with its double perturbative expansion (in terms of numbers of fields and derivatives) is outlined.

Using a mathematical framework which provides a generalization of the de Rham complex (well-designed for p-form gauge fields), we have studied the gauge structure and duality properties of theories for free gauge fields transforming in arbitrary irreducible representations of GL(D, ℝ). We have proven a generalization of the Poincaré lemma which enables us to solve the above-mentioned problems in a systematic and unified way.

We consider four-dimensional higher-spin (HS) theory at the first nontrivial order corresponding to the cubic action. All HS interaction vertices are explicitly obtained from Vasiliev’s equations. In particular, we obtain the vertices that are not determined solely by the HS algebra structure constants. The dictionary between the Fronsdal fields and HS connections is found and the corrections to the Fronsdal equations are derived. These corrections turn out to involve derivatives of arbitrary order. We observe that the vertices not determined by the HS algebra produce naked infinities, when decomposed into the minimal derivative vertices and improvements. Therefore, standard methods can only be used to check a rather limited number of correlation functions within the HS AdS/CFT duality. A possible resolution of the puzzle is discussed.