An Infrared On-Shell Action and its Implications for Soft Charge Fluctuations in Asymptotically Flat Spacetimes

TL;DR

This paper derives an infrared on-shell action for Einstein gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes, linking soft charges, shockwaves, and memory effects, and explores quantum fluctuations leading to an area law.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge-invariant boundary action that unifies soft charges, shockwave effects, and memory phenomena in flat spacetimes, extending previous equivalences.

Findings

The on-shell action matches soft supertranslation charge, shockwave effective action, and soft effective action.

The phase space is characterized by leading soft variables, generalizing shockwave-soft charge relations.

Quantum fluctuations of the supertranslation charge follow an area law.

Abstract

We study the infrared on-shell action of Einstein gravity in asymptotically flat spacetimes, obtaining an effective, gauge-invariant boundary action for memory and shockwave spacetimes. We show that the phase space is in both cases parameterized by the leading soft variables in asymptotically flat spacetimes, thereby extending the equivalence between shockwave and soft commutators to spacetimes with non-vanishing Bondi mass. We then demonstrate that our on-shell action is equal to three quantities studied separately in the literature: $(i)$ the soft supertranslation charge; $(ii)$ the shockwave effective action, or equivalently the modular Hamiltonian; and $(iii)$ the soft effective action. Finally, we compute the quantum fluctuations in the soft supertranslation charge and, assuming the supertranslation parameter may be promoted to an operator, we obtain an area law, consistent with earlier results showing that the modular Hamiltonian has such fluctuations.