More about BMS supertranslations

Bee had a blog posting about the new proposal of Hawking, Perry and Strominger (HPS) to solve the blackhole information loss problem.

In the article Maxwellian electrodynamics is taken as a simpler toy example.

1. One can assign to gauge transformations conserved charges. Gauge invariance tells that these charges vanish for all gauge transformations, which approach trivial transformation at infinity. Now however it is assumed that this need not happen. The assumption that action is invariant under these gauge transformations requires that the radial derivative of the function Φ defining gauge transformation approaches zero at infinity but gauge transformation can be non-trivial in the angle coordinates of sphere S² at infinity. The allowance of these gauge transformations implies infinite number of conserved charges and QED is modified. The conserved gauge charges are generalizations of ordinary electric charged defined as electric fluxes (defining zero energy photons too) and reduce to electric gauge fluxes with electric field multiplied by Φ.
2. For Maxwell's theory the ordinary electric charged defined as gauge flux must vanish. The coupling to say spinor fields changes the situation and due to the coupling the charge as flux is expressible in terms of fermionic oscillator operators and those of U(1) gauge field . For non-constant gauge transformations the charges are at least formally non-trivial even in absence of the coupling to fermions and linear in quantized U(1) gauge field.
3. Since these charges are constants of motion and linear in bosonic oscillator operators, they create or annihilate gauge bosons states with vanishing energy: hence the term soft hair. Holographists would certainly be happy since the charges could be interpreted as representing pure information. If one considers only the part of charge involving annhilation operators one can consider the possibility that in quantum theory physical states are eigenstates of these "half charges" and thus coherent states which are the quantum analogs of classical states. Infinite vacuum degeneracy would be obtained since one would have infinite number of coherent states labelled by the values of the annihilation operator parts of the charges. A situation analogous to conformal invariance in string models is obtained if all these operators either annihilate the vacuum state or create zero energy state.
4. If these U(1) gauge charges create new ground states they could carry information about matter falling into blackhole. Particle physicist might protest this assumption but one cannot exclude it. It would mean generalization of gauge invariance to allow gauge symmetries of the proposed kind. What distinguishes U(1) gauge symmetry from non-Abelian one is that fluxes are well-defined in this case.
5. In the gravitational case the conformal transformations of the sphere at infinity replace U(1) gauge transformations. Usually conformal invariance would requite that almost all conformal charges vanish but now one would not assume this. Now physical states would be eigentates of annihilation operator parts of Virasoro generators L_n and analogous to coherent states and code for information about the ground state. In 4-D context interpretation as strong form of holography would make sense.The critical question is why should one give up conformal invariance as gauge symmetry in the case of blackholes.

1. In TGD framework conformal transformations of boundary of CD correspond to the analogs of BMS transformations. Actually conformal transformations of not only sphere (with constant value of radial coordinate labeling points of light rays emerging from the tip of the light-cone boundary) but also in radial degrees of freedom so that conformal symmetries generalize. This happens only in case of 4-D Minkowski space and also for the light-like 3-surfaces defining the orbits of partonic 2-surfaces. One actually obtains a huge generalization of conformal symmetries. As a matter of fact, Bee wondered whether the information related to radial degrees of freedom is lost: one might argue that holography eliminates them.
2. Amusingly, one obtains also the analogs of U(1) gauge transformations in TGD! In TGD framework symplectic transformations of light-cone boundary times CP₂ act like U(1) gauge transformations but are not gauge symmetries for Kähler action except for vacuum extremals! This is assumed in the argument of the article to give blackhole its soft hair but without any reasonable justification. One can assign with these symmetries infinite number of non-trivial conserved charges: super-symplectic algebra plays a fundamental role in the construction of the geometry of "World of Classical Worlds" (WCW).

   At imbedding space level the counterpart for the sphere at infinity in TGD with the sphere at which the lightcone-boundaries defining the boundary of causal diamond (CD) intersect. At the level of space-time surfaces the light-like orbits of partonic 2-surfaces at which the signature of the induced metric changes are the natural counterparts of the 3-surface at infinity.

   In TGD framework Noether charges vanish for some subalgebra of the entire algebra isomorphic to it and one obtains a hierarchy of quantum states (infinite number of hierarchies actually) labelled by an integer identifiable in terms of Planck constant h_eff/h=n. If colleagues managed to realize that BMS has a huge generalization in the situation when space-times are surface in M⁴×CP₂, floodgates would be open.

   One obtains a hierarchy of breakings of superconformal invariance, which for some reason has remained un-discovered by string theorists. The natural next discovery would be that one indeed obtains this kind of hierarchy by demanding that conformal gauge charges still vanish for a sub-algebra isomorphic with the original one. Interesting to see who will make the discovery. String theorists have failed to realize also the completely unique aspects of generalized conformal invariance at 3-D light-cone boundary raising dimension D=4 to a completely unique role. To say nothing about the fact that M⁴ and CP₂ are twistorially completely unique. I would continue the list but it seems that the emergence super string elite has made independent thinking impossible, or at least the communications of the outcomes of independent thinking.

1. The first thing to notice is that Kähler gauge potentials are not the primary dynamical variables. This role is taken by the imbedding space coordinates. The symplectic transformations of CP₂ act like gauge transformations mathematically but affect the induced metric so that Kähler action does not remain invariant. The breaking is small due to the weakness of the classical gravitation. Indeed, if symplectic transformations are to define isometries of WCW, they cannot leave Kähler action invariant since the Kähler metric would be trivial! One can deduce symplectic charges as Noether charges and they might serve as analogs fo the somewhat questionable generalized gauge charges in HPS proposal.
2. If the counterparts of the gauge fluxes make sense they must be associated with partonic 2-surfaces serving as basic building bricks of elementary particles. Field equations do not follow from independent variations of Kähler gauge potential but from that of imbedding space coordinates. Hence identically conserved Kähler current does not vanish for all extremals. Indeed, so called massless extremals ( MEs) can carry a non-vanishing light-like Kähler current, whose direction in the general case varies. MEs are analogous to laser beams and if the current is Kähler charged it means that one has massless charged particle.
3. Since Kähler action is invariant also under ordinary gauge transformations one can formally derive the analog of conserved gauge charge for non-constant gauge transformation Φ. The question is whether this current has any physical meaning.

   One obtains current as contraction of Kähler form and gradient of Φ:

   j^α_Φ= J^αβ∂_βΦ ,

   which is conserved only if Kähler current vanishes so that Maxwell's equations are true or if the contraction of Kähler current with gradient of Φ vanishes:

   j^α_Φ∂_αΦ=0 .

   The construction of preferred extremals leads to the proposal that the flow lines of Kähler current are integrable in the sense that one can assign a global coordinate Ψ with them. This means that Kähler current is proportional to gradient of Ψ:

   j^α_Φ= g^αβ ∂_βΨ .

   This implies that the gradients of Φ and Ψ are orthogonal. If Kähler current is light-like as it is for the known extremals, Φ is superposition of light-like gradient of Ψ and of two gradients in a sub-space of tangent space analogous to space of two physical polarizations. Essentially the local variant of the polarization-wave vector geometry of the modes of radiative solutions of Maxwell's equations is obtained. What is however important that superposition is possible only for modes with the same local direction of wave vector (∇Ψ) and local polarization.

   Kähler current would be scalar function k times gradient of Ψ :

   j^α_Φ= kg^αβ∂_βΨ .

   The proposal for preferred extremals generalizing at least MEs leads to the proposal that the extremals define two light-like coordinates and two transversal coordinates.

4. The conserved current decomposes to a sum of interior and boundary terms. Consider first the boundary term. The boundary contributions to the generalized gauge charge is given by the generalized fluxes

   Q_δ,Φ= ∮ J^tnΦ g^1/2

   over partonic 2-surfaces at which the signature of the induced metric changes from Euclidian to Minkowskian. These contributions come from both sides of partonic 2-surface corresponding to Euclidian and Minkowskian metric and they differ by a imaginary unit coming from g^1/2 at the Minkoskian side. Q_δ,Φ could vanish since g^1/2 approaches zero because the signature of the induced metric changes at the orbit of the partonic 2-surfaces. What happens depends on how singular the electric component of gauge potential is allow to be. Weak form of electric magnetic duality proposed as boundary condition implies that the electric flux reduces to magnetic flux in which case the result would be magnetic flux weighted by Φ.

5. Besides this there is interior contribution, which is Kähler current multiplied by -Φ:

   Q_int,Φ= ∫ j^tΦ g^1/2 .

   This contribution is present for MEs.

6. Could one interpret these charges as genuine Noether charges? Maybe! The charges seem to have physical meaning and they depend on extremals. The functions Φ could even have some natural physical interpretation. The modes of the induced spinor fields are localized at string world sheets by strong form of holography and by the condition that electric charge is well defined notion for them. The modes correspond to complex scalar functions analogous to powers zⁿ associated with the modes of conformal fields. Maybe the scalar functions could be assigned to the second quantized fermions. Note that one cannot interpret these contributions in terms of oscillator operators since the second quantization of the induced gauge fields does not make sense. This would conform with strong form of holography which in TGD framework sense that the descriptions in terms of fundamental fermions and in terms of classical dynamics of Kähler action are dual. This duality suggest that the quantal variants of generalized Kähler charges are expressible in terms of fermionic oscillator operators generating also bosonic states as analogs of bound states. The generalized charge eigenstates might be also seen as analogs of coherent states.