Past Infinity Research Articles

BMS-supertranslation charges at the critical sets of null infinity

For asymptotically flat spacetimes, a conjecture by Strominger states that asymptotic BMS-supertranslations and their associated charges at past null infinity I− can be related to those at future null infinity I+ via an antipodal map at spatial infinity i0. We analyze the validity of this conjecture using Friedrich’s formulation of spatial infinity, which gives rise to a regular initial value problem for the conformal field equations at spatial infinity. A central structure in this analysis is the cylinder at spatial infinity I representing a blow-up of the standard spatial infinity point i0 to a 2-sphere. The cylinder I touches past and future null infinities I± at the critical sets I±. We show that for a generic class of asymptotically Euclidean and regular initial data, BMS-supertranslation charges are not well-defined at I± unless the initial data satisfies an extra regularity condition. We also show that given initial data that satisfy the regularity condition, BMS-supertranslation charges at I± are fully determined by the initial data and that the relation between the charges at I− and those at I+ directly follows from our regularity condition.

Soft gravitons in the BFSS matrix model

BFSS proposed that asymptotically flat M-theory is dual to a large N limit of the matrix quantum mechanics describing N nonrelativistic D0-branes. Recent insights on the soft symmetries of any quantum theory of gravity in asymptotically flat space are applied to the BFSS matrix model. It is shown that soft gravitons are realized by submatrices whose rank is held fixed in the large N M-theory limit, rather than the usual linear scaling with N for hard gravitons. The soft expansion is identified with the large N expansion and the soft theorem becomes a universal formula for the quantum mechanical scattering of such submatrix excitations. This formula is shown to be the Ward identity of large type IIA U(1)RR asymptotic gauge symmetry in the matrix model, whose asymptotic boundaries are at future and past timelike infinity.

Asymptotic States and S-Matrix Operator in de Sitter Ambient Space Formalism

Within the de Sitter ambient space framework, the two different bases of the one-particle Hilbert space of the de Sitter group algebra are presented for the scalar case. Using field operator algebra and its Fock space construction in this formalism, we discuss the existence of asymptotic states in de Sitter QFT under an extension of the adiabatic hypothesis and prove the Fock space completeness theorem for the massive scalar field. We define the quantum state in the limit of future and past infinity on the de Sitter hyperboloid in an observer-independent way. These results allow us to examine the existence of the S-matrix operator for de Sitter QFT in ambient space formalism, a question which is usually obscure in spacetime with a cosmological event horizon for a specific observer. Some similarities and differences between QFT in Minkowski and de Sitter spaces are discussed.

Bach equation and the matching of spacetimes in conformal cyclic cosmology models

We consider the problem of matching two spacetimes, the previous and present aeons, in the Conformal Cyclic Cosmology model. The common boundary between them inherits two sets of constraints -- one for each solution of the Einstein field equations extended to the conformal boundaries. The previous aeon is assumed to be an asymptotically de Sitter spacetime, so the standard conformal formulation of the Einstein field equations suffice to derive the constraints on the future null infinity. For the future aeon, which is supposed to evolve from an initial singularity, they are obtained with the use of the Bach equation. This equation is regular at the past conformal infinity for conformally flat and conformally Einstein spacetimes, so we will mostly focus on them here. An example of the electrovacuum spacetime which does not fall into this class and has regular conformal Bach tensor will be discussed in the appendix.

Charges, conserved quantities, and fluxes in de Sitter spacetime

We discuss the definition of conserved quantities in asymptotically locally de Sitter spacetimes. One may define an analog of holographic charges at future and past infinity and at other Cauchy surfaces ${I}_{t}$ as integrals over the intersection of timelike surfaces $C$ and the Cauchy surface ${I}_{t}$. In general, the charges ${Q}^{t}$ defined on the Cauchy surface ${I}_{t}$ depend on $C$, but if gravitational flux is absent the charges are independent of $C$. On the other hand, if there is a net gravitational flux entering or leaving the spacetime region bounded by ${C}_{1}$, ${C}_{2}$ and two Cauchy surfaces then $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{Q}^{t}({C}_{1},{C}_{2})={Q}^{t}({C}_{1})\ensuremath{-}{Q}^{t}({C}_{2})$ changes by the same amount.

Asymptotic charges for spin-1 and spin-2 fields at the critical sets of null infinity

The asymptotic charges of spin-1 and spin-2 fields are studied near spatial infinity. We evaluate the charges at the critical sets where spatial infinity meets null infinity with the aim of finding the relation between the charges at future and past null infinities. To this end, we make use of Friedrich’s framework of the cylinder at spatial infinity to obtain asymptotic expansions of the Maxwell and spin-2 fields near spatial infinity, which are fully determined in terms of initial data on a Cauchy hypersurface. With expanding the initial data in terms of spin-weighted spherical harmonics, it is shown that only a subset of the initial data, which satisfy certain regularity conditions, gives rise to well-defined charges at the point where future (past) infinity meets spatial infinity. Given such initial data, the charges are shown to be fully expressed in terms of the freely specifiable part of the data. Moreover, it is shown that there exists a natural correspondence between the charges defined at future and past null infinities.

Gravitational-wave population inference at past time infinity

Population studies of stellar-mass black-hole binaries have become major players in gravitational-wave astronomy. The underlying assumptions are that the targeted source parameters refer to the same quantities for all events in the catalog and are included when modeling selection effects. Both these points have so far been neglected when estimating the orientations of the black-hole spins. In particular, the detector-frame gravitational-wave frequency used to define frequency-dependent quantities (e.g., 20 Hz) introduces an inconsistent reference between events at the population level. We solve both issues by modeling binary black-hole populations and selection effects at past time infinity, corresponding to the well-defined reference frequency of 0 Hz. We show that, while current gravitational-wave measurement uncertainties obfuscate the influence of reference frequency in population inference, ignoring spins when estimating selection effects leads to an over-prediction of spin alignment in the underlying astrophysical distribution of merging black holes.

Staticity and regularity for zero rest-mass fields near spatial infinity on flat spacetime

Linear zero-rest-mass fields generically develop logarithmic singularities at the critical sets where spatial infinity meets null infinity. Friedrich’s representation of spatial infinity is ideally suited to study this phenomenon. These logarithmic singularities are an obstruction to the smoothness of the zero-rest-mass field at null infinity and, in particular, to peeling. In the case of the spin-2 field it has been shown that these logarithmic singularities can be precluded if the initial data for the field satisfies a certain regularity condition involving the vanishing, at spatial infinity, of a certain spinor (the linearised cotton spinor) and its totally symmetrised derivatives. In this article we investigate the relation between this regularity condition and the staticity of the spin-2 field. It is shown that while any static spin-2 field satisfies the regularity condition, not every solution satisfying the regularity condition is static. This result is in contrast with what happens in the case of general relativity where staticity in a neighbourhood of spatial infinity and the smoothness of the field at future and past null infinities are much more closely related.

Emergent unitarity in de Sitter from matrix integrals

We study Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity with positive cosmological constant as a model for de Sitter quantum gravity. We focus on the quantum mechanics of the model at past and future infinity. There is a Hilbert space of asymptotic states and an infinite-time evolution operator between the far past and far future. This evolution is not unitary, although we find that it acts unitarily on a subspace up to non-perturbative corrections. These corrections come from processes which involve changes in the spatial topology, including the nucleation of baby universes. There is significant evidence that this 1+1 dimensional model is dual to a 0+0 dimensional matrix integral in the double-scaled limit. So the bulk quantum mechanics, including the Hilbert space and approximately unitary evolution, emerge from a classical integral. We find that this emergence is a robust consequence of the level repulsion of eigenvalues along with the double scaling limit, and so is rather universal in random matrix theory.

String excitation by initial singularity of inflation

We discuss excitation of string oscillation modes by an initial singularity of inflation. The initial singularity of inflation is known to occur with a finite Hubble parameter, which is generally lower than the string scale, and hence it is not clear that stringy effects become significant around it. With the help of Penrose limit, we find that infinitely heavy oscillation modes get excited when a singularity is strong in the sense of Krolak’s classification. We demonstrate that the initial singularities of Starobinsky and hill top inflation, assuming the slow roll inflation to the past infinity, are strong. Hence stringy corrections are inevitable in the very early stage of these inflation models. We also find that the initial singularity of the hill top inflation could be weak for non-slow roll case.

The Case Against Smooth Null Infinity I: Heuristics and Counter-Examples

This paper initiates a series of works dedicated to the rigorous study of the precise structure of gravitational radiation near infinity. We begin with a brief review of an argument due to Christodoulou (in: The Ninth Marcel Grossmann Meeting, World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore, 2002) stating that Penrose’s proposal of smooth conformal compactification of spacetime (or smooth null infinity) fails to accurately capture the structure of gravitational radiation emitted by N infalling masses coming from past timelike infinity i^-. Modelling gravitational radiation by scalar radiation, we then take a first step towards a dynamical understanding of the non-smoothness of null infinity by constructing solutions to the spherically symmetric Einstein–Scalar field equations that arise from polynomially decaying boundary data, rphi sim t^{-1} as trightarrow -infty , on a timelike hypersurface (to be thought of as the surface of a star) and the no incoming radiation condition, rpartial _vphi =0, on past null infinity. We show that if the initial Hawking mass at i^- is nonzero, then, in accordance with the non-smoothness of {mathcal {I}}^+, the asymptotic expansion of partial _v(rphi ) near {mathcal {I}}^+ reads partial _v(rphi )=Cr^{-3}log r+{mathcal {O}}(r^{-3}) for some non-vanishing constant C. In fact, the same logarithmic terms appear already in the linear theory, i.e. when considering the spherically symmetric linear wave equation on a fixed Schwarzschild background. As a corollary, we can apply our results to the scattering problem on Schwarzschild: Putting compactly supported scattering data for the linear (or coupled) wave equation on {mathcal {I}}^- and on {mathcal {H}}^-, we find that the asymptotic expansion of partial _v(rphi ) near {mathcal {I}}^+ generically contains logarithmic terms at second order, i.e. at order r^{-4}log r.

Currents of created pairs in strong electric fields

In this paper, we calculate tree-level currents of created particles in strong background electric fields in 4D QED for various initial states. Namely, we do that in pulse background for initial vacuum and thermal states at past infinity. In both cases, we find that the current grows linearly with the length of the pulse with coefficients of proportionality containing the characteristic Schwinger’s factor. For the constant electric field background, we calculate the current for several different initial states. We observe that in such a case the current is either zero or linearly divergent. We explain the reason for such a behavior and compare the situation in ordinary and scalar QED. Finally, we calculate the current in two-dimensional situation in the presence of such settings when the so-called Klein paradox can be observed.

Local structure of sprinkled causal sets

We describe numerical and analytical investigations of causal sets sprinkled into spacetime manifolds. The first part of the paper is a numerical study of finite causal sets sprinkled into Alexandrov subsets of Minkowski spacetime of dimensions $1 + 1$, $1 + 2$ and $1 + 3$. In particular we consider the rank 2 past of sprinkled causet events, which is the set of events that are two links to the past. Assigning one of the rank 2 past events as `preferred past' for each event yields a `preferred past structure', which was recently proposed as the basis for a causal set d'Alembertian. We test six criteria for selecting rank 2 past subsets. One criterion performs particularly well at uniquely selecting -- with very high probability -- a preferred past satisfying desirable properties. The second part of the paper concerns (infinite) sprinkled causal sets for general spacetime manifolds. After reviewing the construction of the sprinkling process with the Poisson measure, we consider various specific applications. Among other things, we compute the probability of obtaining a sprinkled causal set of a given isomorphism class by combinatorial means, using a correspondence between causal sets in Alexandrov subsets of $1 + 1$ dimensional Minkowski spacetime and 2D-orders. These methods are also used to compute the expected size of the past infinity as a proportion of the total size of a sprinkled causal set.

A classical, non-singular, bouncing universe

We present a model for a classical, non-singular bouncing cosmology without violation of the null energy condition (NEC). The field content is General Relativity plus a real scalar field with a canonical kinetic term and only renormalizable, polynomial-type self-interactions for the scalar field in the Jordan frame. The universe begins vacuum-energy dominated and is contracting at t=-∞. We consider a closed universe with a positive spatial curvature, which is responsible for the universe bouncing without any NEC violation. An Rϕ2 coupling between the Ricci scalar and the scalar field drives the scalar field from the initial false vacuum to the true vacuum during the bounce. The model is sub-Planckian throughout its evolution and every dimensionful parameter is below the effective-field-theory scale MP, so we expect no ghost-type or tachyonic instabilities. This model solves the horizon problem and extends co-moving particle geodesics to past infinity, resulting in a geodesically complete universe without singularities. We solve the Friedman equations and the scalar-field equation of motion numerically, and analytically under certain approximations.

On Schwarzschild causality in higher dimensions

We show that the causal properties of asymptotically flat spacetimes depend on their dimensionality: while the time-like future of any point in the past conformal infinity contains the whole of the future conformal infinity in (2 + 1) and (3 + 1) dimensional Schwarzschild spacetimes, this property (which we call the Penrose property) does not hold for (d + 1) dimensional Schwarzschild if d > 3. We also show that the Penrose property holds for the Kerr solution in (3 + 1) dimensions, and discuss the connection with scattering theory in the presence of positive mass.

Liouville description of conical defects in dS4, Gibbons-Hawking entropy as modular entropy, and dS3 holography

We model the back-reaction of a static observer in four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime by means of a singular ℤq quotient. The set of fixed points of the ℤq action consists of a pair of codimension two minimal surfaces given by 2-spheres in the Euclidean geometry. The introduction of an orbifold parameter q > 1 permits the construction of an effective action for the bulk gravity theory with support on each of these minimal surfaces. The effective action corresponds to that of Liouville field theory on a 2-sphere with a finite vacuum expectation value of the Liouville field. The intrinsic Liouville theory description yields a thermal Cardy entropy that we reintrepret as a modular free energy at temperature T = q−1, whereupon the Gibbons-Hawking entropy arises as the corresponding modular entropy. We further observe that in the limit q → ∞ the four-dimensional geometry reduces to that of global dS3 spacetime, where the two original minimal surfaces can be mapped to the future and past infinities of dS3 by means of a double Wick rotation. In this limit, the Liouville theories on the minimal surfaces become boundary theories at zero temperature whose total central charge equals that computed using the dS3/CFT2 correspondence.

Resolving a spacetime singularity with field transformations

Abstract It is widely believed that classical gravity breaks down and quantum gravity is needed to deal with a singularity. We show that there is a class of spacetime curvature singularities which can be resolved with metric and matter field transformations. As an example, we consider an anisotropic power-law inflation model with scalar and gauge fields in which a space-like curvature singularity exists at the beginning of time. First, we provide a transformation of the metric to the flat geometry, i.e. the Minkowski metric. The transformation removes the curvature singularity located at the origin of time. An essential difference from previous work in the literature is that the origin of time is not sent to past infinity by the transformation but it remains at a finite time in the past. Thus the geometry becomes extensible beyond the singularity. In general, matter fields are still singular in their original form after such a metric transformation. However, we explicitly show that there is a case in which the singular behavior of the matter fields can be completely removed by a redefinition of matter fields. Thus, for the first time, we have resolved a class of initial cosmic singularities and successfully extended the spacetime beyond the singularity in the framework of classical gravity.

Bondi-Metzner-Sachs invariance and electric-magnetic duality

We exhibit a Hamiltonian formulation, both for electromagnetism and gravitation, in which it is not required that the Bondi "news" vanish, but only that the incoming news be equal to the outgoing ones. This requirement is implemented by defining the fields on a two-sheeted hyperbolic surface, which we term "the hourglass". It is a spacelike deformation of the complete lightcone. On it one approaches asymptotically (null) past and future infinity while remaining at a fixed (hyperbolic) time, by going to large spatial distances on its two sheets. The Hamiltonian formulation and -- in particular -- a conserved angular momentum, can only be constructed if one brings in both, the electric and magnetic BMS charges, together with their canonically conjugate "memories". This reveals a close interplay between the BMS and electric-magnetic duality symmetries.

De Sitter space and entanglement

We argue that the notion of entanglement in de Sitter space arises naturally from the non-trivial Lorentzian geometry of the spacetime manifold, which consists of two disconnected boundaries and a causally disconnected interior. In four bulk dimensions, we propose an holographic description of an inertial observer in terms of a thermofield double state in the tensor product of the two boundaries Hilbert spaces, whereby the Gibbons–Hawking formula arises as the holographic entanglement entropy between the past and future conformal infinities. When considering the bulk entanglement between the two causally disconnected Rindler wedges, we show that the corresponding entanglement entropy is given by one quarter of the area of the pair of codimension two minimal surfaces that define the set of fixed points of the dS orbifold.

On iϵ prescription in cosmology

This is a technical note on the iϵ prescription in cosmology where we consider a self-interacting scalar field in the Poincare patch of the de Sitter space whose Hamiltonian has explicit time dependence. We use both path integral and operator formalisms to work out the evolution of states from asymptotic past infinity with iϵ prescription, which becomes nontrivial even in the free theory, and explicitly show how arbitrary states are projected onto the vacuum. We establish that in perturbation theory the ie prescription can be implemented in Weinberg's commutator formula by just inserting ϵ dependent convergence factors that make the oscillating time integrals at infinity meaningful.