paper

Bulk supertranslation memories: a concept reshaping the vacua and black holes of general relativity

arXiv:1606.00377 · doi:10.1142/S0218271816440065

Abstract

The memory effect is a prediction of general relativity on the same footing as the existence of gravitational waves. The memory effect is understood at future null infinity as a transition induced by null radiation from a Poincaré vacuum to another vacuum. Those are related by a supertranslation, which is a fundamental symmetry of asymptotically flat spacetimes. In this essay, I argue that finite supertranslation diffeomorphisms should be extended into the bulk spacetime consistently with canonical charge conservation. It then leads to fascinating geometrical features of gravitational Poincaré vacua. I then argue that in the process of black hole merger or gravitational collapse, dramatic but computable memory effects occur. They lead to a final stationary metric which qualitatively deviates from the Schwarzschild metric.

5 pages + bibliography. Honorable mention at the Gravity Research Foundation 2016 Essay Contest

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