arXiv · 2608.12241
Aspects of Carrollian field theory from holography
Abstract
We study holography for three-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes in which the bulk gravitational dynamics is conjectured to be dual to a two-dimensional Carrollian (equivalently BMS) conformal field theory. Such theories are known to arise as ultrarelativistic ($c\rightarrow0$) contractions of relativistic 2d conformal field theories. Under this contraction, the Virasoro algebra becomes the conformal Carrollian algebra and the Brown-Henneaux central charges become $c_L=0$, $c_M=\frac{3}{G}$. In this article, we recover these central charges directly from holography. We first construct the holographic quasilocal stress tensor for asymptotically flat spacetimes carrying Bondi mass and angular momentum. Under BMS$_3$ transformations, the stress tensor acquires an inhomogeneous term, the ``BMS Schwarzian", and extracting the central charges from it reproduces the algebraic result exactly. We then obtain the action for the boundary BMS Schwarzian modes. Finally, we show that the holographic stress-tensor correlators satisfy the expected Ward identity, while stress-tensor conservation obeys flux-balance laws.
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Hare Krishna, Vaishnavi Patil. 2026-08-12. Aspects of Carrollian field theory from holography. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12241
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