Barnich–Troessaert bracket as a Dirac bracket on the covariant phase space

Abstract

Abstract The Barnich–Troessaert bracket is a proposal for a modified Poisson bracket on the covariant phase space for general relativity. The new bracket allows us to compute charges, which are otherwise not integrable. Yet there is a catch. There is a clear prescription for how to evaluate the new bracket for any such charge, but little is known how to extend the bracket to the entire phase space. This is a problem, because not every gravitational observable is also a charge. In this paper, we propose such an extension. The basic idea is to remove the radiative data from the covariant phase space. This requires second-class constraints. Given a few basic assumptions, we show that the resulting Dirac bracket on the constraint surface is nothing but the BT bracket. A heuristic argument is given to show that the resulting constraint surface can only contain gravitational edge modes.