Superrotations at spacelike infinity

Abstract

We propose a consistent set of boundary conditions for gravity in asymptotically flat spacetime at spacelike infinity, which yields an enhancement of the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs group with smooth superrotations and new subleading symmetries. These boundary conditions are obtained by allowing fluctuations of the boundary structure which are responsible for divergences in the symplectic form, and a renormalization procedure is required to obtain finite canonical generators. The latter are then made integrable by incorporating boundary terms into the symplectic structure, which naturally derive from a linearized spin-two boundary field on a curved background with positive cosmological constant. Finally, we show that the canonical generators form a nonlinear algebra under the Poisson bracket and verify the consistency of this structure with the Jacobi identity. Published by the American Physical Society 2024