Canonical Charges in Flatland

TL;DR

This paper introduces the analysis of asymptotic symmetries in 2+1 dimensional flat spacetimes, exploring their role in quantum gravity, holography, and black hole soft hair phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive introduction to asymptotic symmetry analysis in 2+1D flat spacetimes, including quantization methods and applications to holography and black hole physics.

Findings

Derivation of asymptotic symmetry algebras for flat spacetimes

Insights into the role of soft hair in black hole entropy

Framework for connecting gravitational symmetries with dual quantum theories

Abstract

In this series of lectures we give an introduction to the concept of asymptotic symmetry analysis with a focus on asymptotically flat spacetimes in 2+1 dimensions. We explain general ideas of quantizing gauge theories and then apply these ideas to gravity both in the metric as well as the Chern-Simons formulations. This enables one to compute the asymptotic symmetries of given gravitational configurations that in turn act as the basic underlying symmetries of a possible dual quantum field theory in the context of holography. We also briefly elaborate on the concept of "soft hair" excitations of black holes in this context.