HEP Theory Journal Club

Coadjoint Orbits of Gravitational Edge Modes

Faroogh Moosavian

McGill

I will be presenting a recent work based on collaboration with W. Donnelly, L. Freidel, and A. Speranza on the coadjoint orbits of the gravitational edge modes. I will first describe the edge modes of gravity and their symmetry group. Then, the classification of coadjoint orbits of the symmetry group will be presented, which is necessary to understand the quantization problem in the approach based on physical symmetries of subregions. In the process of understanding coadjoint orbits of the symmetry group, a curious connection to the symmetry group of ideal barotropic fluids emerges, which I briefly describe. Furthermore, I explain how the quantities on the phase space of General Relativity are mapped to the corresponding quantities in the space of coadjoint orbits under a moment map. This classification clarifies the algebraic structure of gravitational edge modes and paves a way for the quantization.