English

Chern-Simons corner phase space in 4D gravity from BF-BB theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-03-05 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We investigate an approach to determine the correct Poisson brackets of fields restricted to codimension 2 and 3 surfaces in 4D gravity, which are of great potential use in holographic setups and discretisation. Employing a specific BF-BB type parametrisation of gravity which relaxes Plebanski's simplicity constraints, we find that gravity in 4 dimensions carries Chern-Simons like phase spaces in codimension 2 and Kac-Moody algebras in codimension 3. The necessary gauge algebra in this context shows that the appropriate generalisation of the double Dso(1,2)\mathcal{D}\mathfrak{so}(1,2) of 3D gravity is the Maxwell algebra, g=so(1,3)(R1,3~so(1,3))\mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{so}(1,3)\ltimes(\mathbb{R}^{1,3}\tilde\oplus \mathfrak{so}(1,3)^\ast). This realises the corner Poisson bracket of the spin connection for the first time and shows it is off-shell commutative, while the corner metric is noncommutative.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.03429,
  title  = {Chern-Simons corner phase space in 4D gravity from BF-BB theory},
  author = {Simon Langenscheidt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.03429},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

42 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:01:58.506Z