# BMS Characters and Modular Invariance

## TL;DR

This paper constructs characters for the BMS$_3$ algebra's highest weight representations, uses modular invariance to derive a density of states, and relates these to flat space cosmologies' entropy, connecting 3D asymptotic symmetries with 2D CFT structures.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel character formula for BMS$_3$ representations and links BMS modular transformations to the entropy of flat space cosmologies.

## Key findings

- BMS characters reproduce the BMS-Cardy entropy.
- BMS primaries account for most of the flat space cosmologies' entropy.
- A new automorphism in 2D CFT explains the character equivalence.

## Abstract

We construct the characters for the highest weight representations of the 3d Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS$_3$) algebra. We then use these to construct the partition function and show how to use BMS modular transformations to obtain a density of primary states. The entropy thus obtained accounts for the principle part of the entropy obtained from the BMS-Cardy formula. This suggests that BMS primaries capture most of the entropy of Flat Space Cosmologies, which are the flatspace analogues of BTZ black holes in AdS$_3$. We reproduce our character formula by looking at singular limits from 2d CFT characters and find that our answers are identical to the characters obtained for the very different induced representations. We offer an algebraic explanation to this arising from a (to the best of our knowledge) novel automorphism in the parent 2d CFT.