Subleading BMS charges and fake news near null infinity

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we establish a relation between the non-linearly conserved New-man-Penrose charges and certain subleading terms in a large-r expansion of the BMS charges in an asymptotically-flat spacetime. We define the subleading BMS charges by considering a 1/r-expansion of the Barnich-Brandt prescription for defining asymptotic charges in an asymptotically-flat spacetime. At the leading order, i.e. 1/r 0, one obtains the standard BMS charges, which would be integrable and conserved in the absence of a flux term at null infinity, corresponding to gravitational radiation, or Bondi news. At subleading orders, analogous terms in general provide obstructions to the integrability of the corresponding charges. Since the subleading terms are defined close to null infinity, but vanish actually at infinity, the analogous obstructions are not associated with genuine Bondi news. One may instead describe them as corresponding to “fake news”. At order r −3, we find that a set of integrable charges can be defined and that these are related to the ten non-linearly conserved Newman-Penrose charges.