{
  "abstract": "We consider 4-dimensional asymptotically flat vacuum spacetimes near future null infinity endowed with the most general allowable Carroll geometry. We show that the near-boundary radial expansion (to a certain order) can be organised in terms of connections that can be obtained by gauging the conformal Carroll algebra. The only non-vanishing curvatures in this gauging procedure are those that are associated with the special conformal generators and we will refer to these as the $K$-curvatures. The vanishing of these $K$-curvatures defines an asymptotic vacuum spacetime and we use this to construct a boundary (i.e. Carroll) covariant expression for the vacuum (soft) shear in terms of two boundary Carroll scalar fields. The $K$-curvatures transform in a hierarchical fashion into one another under Carroll boosts. This leads to a classification of 4 types of spacetimes: vacuum, strongly and weakly non-radiative, and radiative spacetimes. It is shown that the $K$-curvatures correspond to 5 of the 10 Weyl tensor components at leading order in their $1/r$ expansion. We furthermore observe that one of the $K$-curvatures is equal to the recently found Carroll boost anomaly. Finally, we show that the Bondi loss equations for the boundary energy-momentum-news complex can be cast into a form involving another energy-momentum tensor with vanishing energy flux that is traceless and whose non-conservation is entirely captured by the $K$-curvatures. The BMS currents can be obtained by contracting this latter energy-momentum tensor with a Carroll conformal Killing vector.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2609.09954",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Jelle Hartong"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2z3yajkc73yyd.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2609.09954",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "2z3yajkc73yyd",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09954",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "gr-qc"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "hep-th"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3106|Black Holes and Theoretical Physics"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7212162531",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.09954",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-09",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2z3yajkc73yyd.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:20:26Z",
      "native_id": "2609.09954",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09954"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:gr-qc",
      "subfield": "gravitation"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:hep-th",
      "subfield": "high-energy"
    }
  ],
  "title": "The Geometry of Gravitational Radiation",
  "title_text": "The Geometry of Gravitational Radiation",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:20:26Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2z3yajkc73yyd",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}