3d conformal fields with manifest sl(2, ℂ)

In the present paper we construct all short representation of so(3, 2) with the sl(2, ℂ) symmetry made manifest due to the use of sl(2, ℂ) spinors. This construction has a natural connection to the spinor-helicity formalism for massless fields in AdS₄ suggested earlier. We then study unitarity of the resulting representations, identify them as the lowest-weight modules and as conformal fields in the three-dimensional Minkowski space. Finally, we compare these results with the existing literature and discuss the properties of these representations under contraction of so(3, 2) to the Poincare algebra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]