Exploring Supertranslations in General Relativity

Recent research by Divyesh N. Solanki and Srijit Bhattacharjee, titled "Supertranslations at Spatial and Timelike Infinities in the First-Order Formalism," delves into the concept of supertranslations within the framework of general relativity. The authors submitted their findings on September 3, 2024, to arXiv, a repository for scientific papers.

In this paper, the authors explore supertranslations at both spatial and future timelike infinity, relaxing the Ashtekar-Engle-Sloan boundary conditions. This adjustment allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the tetrads and Lorentz connections involved in these translations. By employing the covariant phase space technique, they derive Hamiltonian charges for supertranslations at both types of infinities.

The results indicate that the charges obtained align with expressions previously reported using a metric-based approach, suggesting a consistency in the theoretical frameworks used to study these phenomena. This work contributes to the ongoing discourse in general relativity and quantum cosmology, potentially impacting how physicists understand the boundaries of spacetime and the implications of supertranslations in theoretical models.

The paper can be cited as: arXiv:2409.01783.