Asymptotic structure with a positive cosmological constant

Abstract

This is the second of two papers (Fernández-Álvarez F and Senovilla J M M 2021 Class. Quantum Grav. 39 165011) that study the asymptotic structure of space–times with a non-negative cosmological constant Λ. This paper deals with the case Λ > 0. Our approach is founded on the ‘tidal energies’ built with the Weyl curvature and, specifically, we use the asymptotic super-Poynting vector computed from the rescaled Bel–Robinson tensor at infinity to provide a covariant, gauge-invariant, criterion for the existence, or absence, of gravitational radiation at infinity. The fundamental idea we put forward is that the physical asymptotic properties are encoded in , where the first element of the triplet is a three-dimensional manifold, the second is a representative of a conformal class of Riemannian metrics on , and the third element is a traceless symmetric tensor field on . The full set of physically relevant properties of the space–time cannot be characterised at infinity without taking D ab into consideration, and our radiation criterion takes this fully into account. We similarly propose a no-incoming radiation criterion based also on the triplet and on radiant supermomenta deduced from the rescaled Bel–Robinson tensor too. We search for news tensors encoding the two degrees of freedom of gravitational radiation and argue that any news-like object must be associated to, and depends on, two-dimensional cross-sections of . We identify one component of news for every such cross-section and present a general strategy to find the second component, which depends on the particular physical situation. We put in connection the radiation condition and the news-like tensors with the directional structure of the gravitational field at infinity and the criterion of no-incoming radiation. We also introduce the concept of equipped by endowing the conformal boundary with a selected congruence of curves which may be determined by the algebraic structure of the asymptotic Weyl tensor. We also define a group of asymptotic symmetries preserving the new structures. We consider the limit Λ → 0, and apply all our results to selected exact solutions of Einstein field equations in order to illustrate their validity.