English

Center-less BMS charge algebra

High Energy Physics - Theory 2024-07-17 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We show that when the Wald-Zoupas prescription is implemented, the resulting charges realize the BMS symmetry algebra without any 2-cocycle nor central extension, at any cut of future null infinity. We refine the covariance prescription for application to the charge aspects, and introduce a new aspect for Geroch's super-momentum with better covariance properties. For the extended BMS symmetry with singular conformal Killing vectors we find that a Wald-Zoupas symplectic potential exists, if one is willing to modify the symplectic structure by a corner term. The resulting algebra of Noether currents between two arbitrary cuts is center-less. The charge algebra at a given cut has a residual field-dependent 2-cocycle, but time-independent and non-radiative. More precisely, super-rotation fluxes act covariantly, but super-rotation charges act covariantly only on global translations. The take home message is that in any situation where 2-cocycles appears in the literature, covariance has likely been lost in the charge prescription, and that the criterium of covariance is a powerful one to reduce ambiguities in the charges, and can be used also for ambiguities in the charge aspects.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.01526,
  title  = {Center-less BMS charge algebra},
  author = {Antoine Rignon-Bret and Simone Speziale},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.01526},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

55 pages. v2: minor amendments, matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:14:33.248Z