Supertranslations call for superrotations
Abstract
We review recent results on symmetries of asymptotically flat spacetimes at null infinity. In higher dimensions, the symmetry algebra realizes the Poincar\'e algebra. In three and four dimensions, besides the infinitesimal supertranslations that have been known since the sixties, the algebras are evenly balanced because there are also infinitesimal superrotations. We provide the classification of central extensions of the bms3 and bms4 algebras. Applications and consequences as well as directions for future work are briefly indicated.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1102.4632,
title = {Supertranslations call for superrotations},
author = {Glenn Barnich and Cédric Troessaert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.4632},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
v2: minor cosmetic changes, 11 pages, Proceedings of the Workshop on Non Commutative Field Theory and Gravity, September 8-12, 2010, Corfu, Greece and the 7th Spring School and Workshop on Quantum Field Theory and Hamiltonian Systems, 10-15 May 2010, Craiova and Calimanesti, Romania