Carrollian Conformal Dynamics and Flat-Space Holography
Abstract
The conformal boundary of asymptotically flat spacetime is null and therefore carries a Carrollian rather than Lorentzian geometry. This changes the relation between symmetry, variational principles and evolution equations in an essential way: unlike a Lorentzian Levi-Civita connection, a torsion-free Carrollian connection compatible with the conformal structure contains genuine independent data. We develop a metric-affine formulation of conformal dynamics that keeps track of these connection degrees of freedom through hypermomenta. Local Carroll boosts, rotations, Weyl transformations and diffeomorphisms then imply a set of covariant evolution equations. We apply this framework to Einstein gravity in four-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes. Penrose's conformal compactification identifies null infinity as a conformal Carrollian manifold; the undetermined transverse symmetric part of its compatible connection is the asymptotic Bondi shear. After fixing a Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) frame and identifying the Carrollian momenta and hypermomenta with the Bondi data, the general Carrollian evolution equations reproduce the standard evolution equations for the mass and angular-momentum aspects. The result provides a boundary-intrinsic derivation of the gravitational evolution equations and a geometric realization of radiative degrees of freedom in flat-space holography. This is a proceedings contribution to the "Athens Workshop in Theoretical Physics: 10th Anniversary", held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on December 17-19 2025.
Related
BibTeX
@misc{pekar2026carrollian,
title = {{Carrollian Conformal Dynamics and Flat-Space Holography}},
author = {Simon Pekar},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.17086},
eprint = {2609.17086},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.17086},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Carrollian Conformal Dynamics and Flat-Space Holography
AU - Simon Pekar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/15
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.17086
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.17086
AB - The conformal boundary of asymptotically flat spacetime is null and therefore carries a Carrollian rather than Lorentzian geometry. This changes the relation between symmetry, variational principles and evolution equations in an essential way: unlike a Lorentzian Levi-Civita connection, a torsion-free Carrollian connection compatible with the conformal structure contains genuine independent data. We develop a metric-affine formulation of conformal dynamics that keeps track of these connection degrees of freedom through hypermomenta. Local Carroll boosts, rotations, Weyl transformations and diffeomorphisms then imply a set of covariant evolution equations. We apply this framework to Einstein gravity in four-dimensional asymptotically flat spacetimes. Penrose's conformal compactification identifies null infinity as a conformal Carrollian manifold; the undetermined transverse symmetric part of its compatible connection is the asymptotic Bondi shear. After fixing a Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) frame and identifying the Carrollian momenta and hypermomenta with the Bondi data, the general Carrollian evolution equations reproduce the standard evolution equations for the mass and angular-momentum aspects. The result provides a boundary-intrinsic derivation of the gravitational evolution equations and a geometric realization of radiative degrees of freedom in flat-space holography. This is a proceedings contribution to the "Athens Workshop in Theoretical Physics: 10th Anniversary", held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on December 17-19 2025.
ER -