Thomas Precession for Dressed Particles

Abstract

We consider a particle dressed with boundary gravitons in three-dimensional Minkowski space. The existence of BMS transformations implies that the particle's wavefunction picks up a Berry phase when subjected to changes of reference frames that trace a closed path in the asymptotic symmetry group. We evaluate this phase and show that, for BMS superrotations, it provides a gravitational generalization of Thomas precession. In principle, such phases are observable signatures of asymptotic symmetries.

20 pages, 2 figures. v2: typos fixed, references added, published in Classical and Quantum Gravity

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