String Theory seminar - Federico Capone Seminar

Abstract: In this talk I show how to settle the long-standing open question regarding the existence of BMS symmetries in higher dimensional non-linear gravity. For this purpose, we need a systematic analysis of the solution space at null infinity and the development of the phase space renormalization formalism. With the latter, divergences in the symplectic form are removed using an adapted notion of local and covariant counterterms. Finite BMS charges are then obtained. From this, the derivation of soft scattering theorems as Ward identities of the asymptotic symmetries follows smoothly.