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We consider quantum gravity with zero cosmological constant in three dimensions. First, we show that pure quantum gravity can be written as a magnetic Carrollian theory living on null infinity, described by Schwarzian-like degrees of freedom. Next, we couple quantum gravity to massless matter. Transition amplitudes exhibit several features that resemble soft graviton physics in four dimensions, despite the absence of a propagating graviton. As in four dimensions, we find three equivalent results: a soft graviton theorem, an infinite-dimensional BMS asymptotic symmetry, and a gravitational memory effect. We also resolve some extant puzzles concerning the partition function and Hilbert space of pure 3d gravity with zero cosmological constant., Comment: 36+7 pages, 2 figures

Carrollian field theories have recently emerged as a candidate dual to flat space quantum gravity. We carefully quantize simple two-derivative Carrollian theories, revealing a strong sensitivity to the ultraviolet. They can be regulated upon being placed on a spatial lattice and working at finite inverse temperature. Unlike in conventional field theories, the details of the lattice-regulated Carrollian theories remain important at long distances even in the limit that the lattice spacing is sent to zero. We use that limit to define interacting continuum models with a tractable perturbative expansion. The ensuing theories are those of generalized free fields, with non-Gaussian correlations suppressed by positive powers of the lattice spacing, and an unbroken supertranslation symmetry., Comment: 48 pages, 2 figures; v2: minor changes, matches published version

Motivated by flat space holography, we demonstrate that massive spin-$s$ fields in Minkowski space near timelike infinity are massive carrollian fields on the carrollian counterpart of anti-de Sitter space called $\mathsf{Ti}$. Its isometries form the Poincar\'e group, and we construct the carrollian spin-$s$ fields using the method of induced representations. We provide a dictionary between massive carrollian fields on $\mathsf{Ti}$ and massive fields in Minkowski space, as well as to fields in the conformal primary basis used in celestial holography. We show that the symmetries of the carrollian structure naturally account for the BMS charges underlying the soft graviton theorem. Finally, we initiate a discussion of the correspondence between massive scattering amplitudes and carrollian correlation functions on $\mathsf{Ti}$, and introduce physical definitions of detector operators using a suitable notion of conserved carrollian energy-momentum tensor., Comment: 37 pages, 4 figures; v2: added comments, matches published version

Carrollian conformal field theories (carrollian CFTs) are natural field theories on null infinity of an asymptotically flat spacetime or, in general, geometries with conformal carrollian structure. Using a basis transformation, gravitational S-matrix elements can be brought into the form of correlators of a carrollian CFT. Therefore, it has been suggested that carrollian CFTs could provide a co-dimension one dual description to gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes. In this work, we construct an embedding space formalism for three-dimensional carrollian CFTs and use it to determine two- and three-point correlators. These correlators are fixed by the global subgroup ISO(3,1) of the carrollian conformal symmetries, i.e., the Bondi--van der Burg--Metzner--Sachs symmetries (BMS). The correlators coincide with well-known two- and three-point scattering amplitudes in Minkowski space written with respect to a basis of asymptotic position states., Comment: 45 pages; v2 appendix expanded, agrees with published version

In this paper, three things are done. First, we study from an algebraic point of view the infinite-dimensional BMS-like extensions of the Carroll algebra relevant to the asymptotic structure of the electric and magnetic Carrollian limits of Einstein gravity. In the course of this study we exhibit by "Carroll-Galileo duality" a new infinite-dimensional BMS-like extension of the Galilean algebra and of its centrally extended Bargmann algebra. Second, we consider the electric Carrollian limit of the pure Einstein theory and indicate that more flexible boundary conditions than the ones that follow from just taking the limit of the Einsteinian boundary conditions are actually consistent. These boundary conditions lead to a bigger asymptotic symmetry algebra that involves spatial supertranslations depending on three functions of the angles (instead of one). Third, we turn to the Carrollian limit of the coupled Einstein-Yang-Mills system. An infinite-dimensional color enhancement of the gauge algebra is found in the electric Carrollian limit of the Yang-Mills field, which allows angle-dependent Yang-Mills transformations at spatial infinity, not available in the Einstein-Yang-Mills case prior to taking the Carrollian electric limit. This enhancement does not occur in the magnetic limit., Comment: 34 pages, no figures

We discuss a gauging procedure that allows us to construct lagrangians that dictate the dynamics of an underlying Cartan geometry. In a sense to be made precise in the paper, the starting datum in the gauging procedure is a Klein pair corresponding to a homogeneous space. What the gauging procedure amounts to is the construction of a Cartan geometry modelled on that Klein geometry, with the gauge field defining a Cartan connection. The lagrangian itself consists of all gauge-invariant top-forms constructed from the Cartan connection and its curvature. After demonstrating that this procedure produces four-dimensional General Relativity upon gauging Minkowski spacetime, we proceed to gauge all four-dimensional maximally symmetric carrollian spaces: Carroll, (anti-)de Sitter--Carroll and the lightcone. For the first three of these spaces, our lagrangians generalise earlier first-order lagrangians. The resulting theories of carrollian gravity all take the same form, which seems to be a manifestation of model mutation at the level of the lagrangians. The odd one out, the lightcone, is not reductive and this means that although the equations of motion take the same form as in the other cases, the geometric interpretation is different. For all carrollian theories of gravity we obtain analogues of the Gauss--Bonnet, Pontryagin and Nieh--Yan topological terms, as well as two additional terms that are intrinsically carrollian and seem to have no lorentzian counterpart. Since we gauge the theories from scratch this work also provides a no-go result for the electric carrollian theory in a first-order formulation., Comment: 34+1 pages, 2 figures

We show that the geometry of the asymptotic infinities of Minkowski spacetime (in $d+1$ dimensions) is captured by homogeneous spaces of the Poincar\'e group: the blow-ups of spatial (Spi) and timelike (Ti) infinities in the sense of Ashtekar--Hansen and a novel space Ni fibering over $\mathscr{I}$. We embed these spaces \`a la Penrose--Rindler into a pseudo-euclidean space of signature $(d+1,2)$ as orbits of the same Poincar\'e subgroup of O$(d+1,2)$. We describe the corresponding Klein pairs and determine their Poincar\'e-invariant structures: a carrollian structure on Ti, a pseudo-carrollian structure on Spi and a "doubly-carrollian" structure on Ni. We give additional geometric characterisations of these spaces as grassmannians of affine hyperplanes in Minkowski spacetime: Spi is the (double cover of the) grassmannian of affine lorentzian hyperplanes; Ti is the grassmannian of affine spacelike hyperplanes and Ni fibers over the grassmannian of affine null planes, which is $\mathscr{I}$. We exhibit Ni as the fibred product of $\mathscr{I}$ and the lightcone over the celestial sphere. We also show that Ni is the total space of the bundle of scales of the conformal carrollian structure on $\mathscr{I}$ and show that the symmetry algebra of its doubly-carrollian structure is isomorphic to the symmetry algebra of the conformal carrollian structure on $\mathscr{I}$; that is, the BMS algebra. We show how to reconstruct Minkowski spacetime from any of its asymptotic geometries, by establishing that points in Minkowski spacetime parametrise certain lightcone cuts in the asymptotic geometries. We include an appendix comparing with (A)dS and observe that the de Sitter groups have no homogeneous spaces which could play the r\^ole that the celestial sphere plays in flat space holography., Comment: 34+6 pages, 6 figures, v2: Appendix E added, v3: Various minor improvements, matches published version

The infinite tower of positive-helicity soft gravitons in any minimally coupled, tree-level, asymptotically flat four-dimensional (4D) gravity was recently shown to generate a $w_{1+\infty}$ asymptotic symmetry algebra. It is natural to ask whether this classical algebra acquires quantum corrections at loop level. We explore this in quantum self-dual gravity, whose amplitudes acquire known one-loop exact all-plus helicity quantum corrections. We show using collinear splitting formulae that, remarkably, the $w_{1+\infty}$ algebra persists in quantum self-dual gravity without corrections., Comment: 11 pages

Infrared divergences in perturbative gravitational scattering amplitudes have been recently argued to be governed by the two-point function of the supertranslation Goldstone mode on the celestial sphere. We show that the form of this celestial two-point function simply derives from an effective action that also controls infrared divergences in the symplectic structure of General Relativity with asymptotically flat boundary conditions. This effective action finds its natural place in a path integral formulation of a celestial conformal field theory, as we illustrate by re-deriving the infrared soft factors in terms of celestial correlators. Our analysis relies on a well-posed action principle close to spatial infinity introduced by Comp\`ere and Dehouck., Comment: 24 pages, one figure

We construct various limits of JT gravity, including Newton-Cartan and Carrollian versions of dilaton gravity in two dimensions as well as a theory on the three-dimensional light cone. In the BF formulation our boundary conditions relate boundary connection with boundary scalar, yielding as boundary action the particle action on a group manifold or some Hamiltonian reduction thereof. After recovering in our formulation the Schwarzian for JT, we show that AdS-Carroll gravity yields a twisted warped boundary action. We comment on numerous applications and generalizations., Comment: 41 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; v2: Matches published version + Footnote 11; v3: Corrected typo in Carrollian/Galilean generalized dilaton potential

Starting from an analysis of four-dimensional asymptotically flat gravity in first order formulation, we show that superrotation reparametrization modes are governed by an Alekseev--Shatashvili action on the celestial sphere. This two-dimensional conformal theory describes spontaneous symmetry breaking of Virasoro superrotations together with the explicit symmetry breaking of more general Diff$(\mathcal{S}^2)$ superrotations. We arrive at this result by first reformulating the asymptotic field equations and symmetries of the radiative vacuum sector in terms of a Chern--Simons theory at null infinity, and subsequently performing a Hamiltonian reduction of this theory onto the celestial sphere., Comment: 40 pages; v2: clarified boundary conditions in section 4, references added; v3: match published version

We extend a recent classification of three-dimensional spatially isotropic homogeneous spacetimes to Chern--Simons theories as three-dimensional gravity theories on these spacetimes. By this we find gravitational theories for all carrollian, galilean, and aristotelian counterparts of the lorentzian theories. In order to define a nondegenerate bilinear form for each of the theories, we introduce (not necessarily central) extensions of the original kinematical algebras. Using the structure of so-called double extensions, this can be done systematically. For homogeneous spaces that arise as a limit of (anti-)de Sitter spacetime, we show that it is possible to take the limit on the level of the action, after an appropriate extension. We extend our systematic construction of nondegenerate bilinear forms also to all higher-dimensional kinematical algebras., Comment: 52 pages, 2 figures, 11 tables; v2: matches published version, additional references added and incorporated referee suggestions

We consider on the bulk side extensions of the Sachdev--Ye--Kitaev (SYK) model to Yang--Mills and higher spins. To this end we study generalizations of the Jackiw--Teitelboim (JT) model in the BF formulation. Our main goal is to obtain generalizations of the Schwarzian action, which we achieve in two ways: by considering the on-shell action supplemented by suitable boundary terms compatible with all symmetries, and by applying the Lee--Wald--Zoupas formalism to analyze the symplectic structure of dilaton gravity. We conclude with a discussion of the entropy (including log-corrections from higher spins) and a holographic dictionary for the generalized SYK/JT correspondence., Comment: 42 pages; v2: Typos corrected

We consider different sets of AdS$_2$ boundary conditions for the Jackiw-Teitelboim model in the linear dilaton sector where the dilaton is allowed to fluctuate to leading order at the boundary of the Poincar\'e disk. The most general set of boundary condtions is easily motivated in the gauge theoretic formulation as a Poisson sigma model and has an $\mathfrak{sl}(2)$ current algebra as asymptotic symmetries. Consistency of the variational principle requires a novel boundary counterterm in the holographically renormalized action, namely a kinetic term for the dilaton. The on-shell action can be naturally reformulated as a Schwarzian boundary action. While there can be at most three canonical boundary charges on an equal-time slice, we consider all Fourier modes of these charges with respect to the Euclidean boundary time and study their associated algebras. Besides the (centerless) $\mathfrak{sl}(2)$ current algebra we find for stricter boundary conditions a Virasoro algebra, a warped conformal algebra and a $\mathfrak{u}(1)$ current algebra. In each of these cases we get one half of a corresponding symmetry algebra in three-dimensional Einstein gravity with negative cosmological constant and analogous boundary conditions. However, on-shell some of these algebras reduce to finite-dimensional ones, reminiscent of the on-shell breaking of conformal invariance in SYK. We conclude with a discussion of thermodynamical aspects, in particular the entropy and some Cardyology., Comment: 42 pp, 5 figs, v2: added refs

We provide a mapping between past null and future null infinity in three-dimensional flat space, using symmetry considerations. From this we derive a mapping between the corresponding asymptotic symmetry groups. By studying the metric at asymptotic regions, we find that the mapping is energy preserving and yields an infinite number of conservation laws., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures; added references and appendix, matches published version

In this proceedings contribution we summarize and discuss results of Refs. \cite{Grumiller:2013swa, Grumiller:2015vaa} in the light of recent developments in $\textrm{AdS}_2$ holography \cite{Maldacena:2016upp, Jensen:2016pah, Engelsoy:2016xyb}., Comment: Talk given by DV at the Workshop "Strong Field Problems in Quantum Theory", Tomsk, 2016. V2: misprint corrected, references added

We study generic two-dimensional dilaton gravity with a Maxwell field and prove its triviality for constant dilaton boundary conditions, despite of the appearance of a Virasoro algebra with non-zero central charge. We do this by calculating the canonical boundary charges, which turn out to be trivial, and by calculating the quantum gravity partition function, which turns out to be unity. We show that none of the following modifications changes our conclusions: looser boundary conditions, non-linear interactions of the Maxwell field with the dilaton, inclusion of higher spin fields, inclusion of generic gauge fields. Finally, we consider specifically the charged Jackiw--Teitelboim model, whose holographic study was pioneered by Hartman and Strominger, and show that it is non-trivial for certain linear dilaton boundary conditions. We calculate the entropy from the Euclidean path integral, using Wald's method and exploiting the chiral Cardy formula. The macroscopic and microscopic results for entropy agree with each other., Comment: added a reference; corrected typos

We study flat space cosmologies in two dimensions by taking the flat space limit of the Achucarro-Ortiz model. We unravel a phase transition between hot flat space and flat space cosmologies, and derive a new dilaton-dependent counterterm required for the consistency of the Euclidean partition function. Our results generalize to asymptotically mass-dominated 2-dimensional dilaton gravity models, whose thermodynamical properties we discuss. The novel case of asymptotic mass-domination is neither covered by the comprehensive discussion of hep-th/0703230 nor by the more recent generalization to dilaton gravity with confining U(1) charges in 1406.7007., Comment: 26 pp

The cosmological constant is treated as a thermodynamical parameter in the framework of two-dimensional dilaton gravity. We find that the cosmological constant behaves as a U(1) charge with a confining potential, and that such potentials require a novel Born-Infeld boundary term in the action. The free energy and other thermodynamical quantities of interest are derived, from first principles, in a way that is essentially model-independent. We discover that there is always a Schottky anomaly in the specific heat and explain its physical origin. Finally, we apply these results to specific examples, like Anti-de Sitter-Schwarzschild-Tangherlini black holes, Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black holes and the Jackiw-Teitelboim model., Comment: 15pp

Black hole thermodynamics emerged from the classical general relativistic laws of black hole mechanics, summarized by Bardeen-Carter-Hawking, together with the physical insights by Bekenstein about black hole entropy and the semi-classical derivation by Hawking of black hole evaporation. The black hole entropy law inspired the formulation of the holographic principle by 't Hooft and Susskind, which is famously realized in the gauge/gravity correspondence by Maldacena, Gubser-Klebanov-Polaykov and Witten within string theory. Moreover, the microscopic derivation of black hole entropy, pioneered by Strominger-Vafa within string theory, often serves as a consistency check for putative theories of quantum gravity. In this book chapter we review these developments over five decades, starting in the 1960ies., Comment: 31pp + refs, invited contribution to "Quantum Aspects of Black Hole Physics", Ed. Xavier Calmet (Springer, 2014)