Infinite-dimensional symmetries in plane wave spacetimes
High Energy Physics - Theory
2026-05-07 v1
Abstract
We study the asymptotic symmetries of the Nappi-Witten spacetime in four dimensions, a plane wave arising as the Penrose limit of AdS. Imposing suitable boundary conditions at large transverse distance, we uncover a new infinite-dimensional symmetry algebra allowing for non-trivial central extensions. The corresponding phase space encompasses the most general four-dimensional pp-wave metric, including in particular the Penrose limit of Kerr black holes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.12760,
title = {Infinite-dimensional symmetries in plane wave spacetimes},
author = {Emilie Despontin and Stéphane Detournay and Dima Fontaine},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.12760},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
7 pages + 1 MM file