Abstract
We study 4 dimensional (4d) gravitational waves (GWs) with compact wavefronts, generalizing Robinson-Trautman (RT) solutions in Einstein gravity with an arbitrary cosmological constant. We construct the most general solution of the GWs in the presence of a causal, timelike, or null boundary when the usual tensor modes are turned off. Our solution space besides the shape and topology of the wavefront which is a generic compact, smooth, and orientable 2d surface Σ, is specified by a vector over Σ satisfying the conformal Killing equation and two scalars that are arbitrary functions over the causal boundary, the boundary modes (soft hair). We work out the symplectic form over the solution space using covariant phase space formalism and analyze the boundary symmetries and charges. The algebra of surface charges is a Heisenberg algebra. Only the overall size of the compact wavefront and not the details of its shape appears in the boundary symplectic form and is canonical conjugate to the overall mass of the GW. Hence, the information about the shape of the wavefront can’t be probed by the boundary observer. We construct a boundary energy-momentum tensor and a boundary current, whose conservation yields the RT equation for both asymptotically AdS and flat spacetimes. The latter provides a hydrodynamic description for our RT solutions.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Glenn Barnich, Piotr T. Chruściel, Luca Ciambelli, Marc Geiller, Céline Zwikel, Gabriel Arenas-Henriquez, Wen-jie Ma for discussions. The work of MMShJ is in part supported by the INSF grant No. 4026712. The work of HA is supported by Beijing Natural Science Foundation under Grant No. IS23018 and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 12150410311.
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Adami, H., Parvizi, A., Sheikh-Jabbari, M.M. et al. Heisenberg soft hair on Robinson-Trautman spacetimes. J. High Energ. Phys. 2024, 191 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2024)191
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2024)191