Event

In 1965 Newman and Penrose (NP) showed that any asymptotically-flat spacetime admits 10 quantities, obtained as certain spherical-harmonic projections of a particular component of the Weyl tensor, which are exactly conserved on future null infinity.  In the same era, the BMS group of symmetries of asymptotically flat spacetimes was being extensively studied, primarily motivated by the goal of better understanding gravitational waves. Although the NP charges and the BMS transformations are both related to the asymptotic properties of the spacetime at null infinity, the relation between the two has been unclear.  Here, we present our new results showing that the NP charges are associated with subleading BMS charges defined in the asymptotic region near null infinity.