English

BMS supertranslations and Weinberg's soft graviton theorem

High Energy Physics - Theory 2015-12-07 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Recently it was conjectured that a certain infinite-dimensional "diagonal" subgroup of BMS supertranslations acting on past and future null infinity (I{\mathscr I}^- and I+{\mathscr I}^+) is an exact symmetry of the quantum gravity S{\cal S}-matrix, and an associated Ward identity was derived. In this paper we show that this supertranslation Ward identity is precisely equivalent to Weinberg's soft graviton theorem. Along the way we construct the canonical generators of supertranslations at I±{\mathscr I}^\pm, including the relevant soft graviton contributions. Boundary conditions at the past and future of I±{\mathscr I}^\pm and a correspondingly modified Dirac bracket are required. The soft gravitons enter as boundary modes and are manifestly the Goldstone bosons of spontaneously broken supertranslation invariance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.7026,
  title  = {BMS supertranslations and Weinberg's soft graviton theorem},
  author = {Temple He and Vyacheslav Lysov and Prahar Mitra and Andrew Strominger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.7026},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages; Corrected typos in Section 2