High Energy Theory Seminar

Boundary conditions for field theories in anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime are essential for defining field dynamics and understanding the AdS/CFT correspondence. In this talk, I will briefly review the standard boundary conditions in AdS and describe the alternative boundary conditions developed in my recent work with Robert M. Wald [arXiv: 2609.10805], which builds upon the formalism of Ishibashi and Wald (2004). I will discuss boundary conditions for scalar field theory, Maxwell and Yang-Mills theories, and Einstein gravity in various dimensions. For Maxwell theory and linearized gravity in four spacetime dimensions, in particular, I will describe the two families of local, energy-conserving boundary conditions we find: one family is fully AdS-invariant, while the other generally breaks part of the AdS symmetry. Of these two families, only the AdS-invariant family has a natural extension to nonlinear gravity in general Fefferman–Graham spacetimes.  I will then explain how the corresponding covariant phase spaces are constructed and discuss several unusual consequences, including the vanishing of asymptotic charges for the nonstandard gravitational boundary conditions and a modified black-hole entropy formula. I will also explain the connection between our work and the program of holographic renormalization.

The talk is in 469 Lauritsen.

Contact [email protected] for Zoom information.