Asymptotic symmetries and charges at null infinity: from low to high spins

• Main Authors: Campoleoni Andrea, Francia Dario, Heissenberg Carlo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2018-01-01
• Series: EPJ Web of Conferences
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201819106011

Weinberg’s celebrated factorisation theorem holds for soft quanta of arbitrary integer spin. The same result, for spin one and two, has been rederived assuming that the infinite-dimensional asymptotic symmetry group of Maxwell’s equations and of asymptotically flat spaces leave the S-matrix invariant. For higher spins, on the other hand, no such infinite-dimensional asymptotic symmetries were known and, correspondingly, no a priori derivation of Weinberg’s theorem could be conjectured. In this contribution we review the identification of higher-spin supertranslations and superrotations in D = 4 as well as their connection to Weinberg’s result. While the procedure we follow can be shown to be consistent in any D, no infinite-dimensional enhancement of the asymptotic symmetry group emerges from it in D > 4, thus leaving a number of questions unanswered.