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arXiv · 2212.07947

Wald-Zoupas prescription with (soft) anomalies

Gloria Odak·Antoine Rignon-Bret·Simone Speziale
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Abstract

We show that the Wald-Zoupas prescription for gravitational charges is valid in the presence of anomalies and field-dependent diffeomorphism, but only if these are related to one another in a specific way. The geometric interpretation of the allowed anomalies is exposed looking at the example of BMS symmetries: They correspond to soft terms in the charges. We determine if the Wald-Zoupas prescription coincides with an improved Noether charge. The necessary condition is a certain differential equation, and when it is satisfied, the boundary Lagrangian of the resulting improved Noether charge contains in general a non-trivial corner term that can be identified a priori from a condition of anomaly-freeness. Our results explain why the Wald-Zoupas prescription works in spite of the anomalous behaviour of BMS transformations, and should be helpful to relate different branches of the literature on surface charges.

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Gloria Odak, Antoine Rignon-Bret, Simone Speziale. 2022-12-15. Wald-Zoupas prescription with (soft) anomalies. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.107.084028

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