In this thesis, several new aspects of asymptotic symmetries have been exploited.Firstly, we have shown that the asymptotic symmetries can be enhanced tosymplectic symmetries in three dimensional asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) space-time with Dirichletboundary conditions. Such enhancement providesa natural connection between the asymptotic symmetries in the far region i.e. closeto the boundary) and the near-horizon region, which leads to a consistenttreatment for both cases. The second investigation in three dimensional space-time is to study theEinstein-Maxwell theory including asymptotic symmetries, solutionspace and surface charges with asymptotically flat boundary conditionsat null infinity. This model allows one to illustrate several aspectsof the four dimensional case in a simplified setting. Afterwards, we givea parallel analysis of Einstein-Maxwell theory in the asymptotically AdScase.Another new aspect consists in demonstrating a deep connection between certainasymptotic symmetry and soft theorem. Recently, a remarkable equivalence wasfound between the Ward identity of certain residual (large) U(1) gauge transformations and the leadingpiece of the soft photon theorem. It is well known that the softphoton theorem includes also a sub-leading piece. We have proven thatthe large U(1) gauge transformation responsible for the leading soft factorcan also explain the sub-leading one.In the last part of the thesis, wewill investigate the asymptotic symmetries near the inner boundary. Asa null hypersurface, the black hole horizon can be considered as an innerboundary. The near horizon symmetries create “soft” degrees of freedom. Wehave generalised such argument to isolated horizon and have shown that those “soft” degreesof freedom of an isolated horizon are equivalent to its electric multipolemoments. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In this thesis, the symmetry structure of gravitational theories at null infinity is studied further, in the case of pure gravity in four dimensions and also in the case of Einstein-Yang-Mills theory in d dimensions with and without a cosmological constant.<p><p>The first part of this thesis is devoted to the presentation of asymptotic methods (symmetries, solution space and surface charges) applied to gravity in the case of the BMS gauge in three and four spacetime dimensions.<p><p>The second part of this thesis contains the original contributions.<p>Firstly, it is shown that the enhancement from Lorentz to Virasoro algebra also occurs for asymptotically flat spacetimes defined in the sense of Newman-Unti. As a first application, the transformation laws of the Newman-Penrose coefficients characterizing solution space of the Newman-Unti approach are worked out, focusing on the inhomogeneous terms that contain the information about central extensions of the theory. These transformations laws make the conformal structure particularly transparent, and constitute the main original result of the thesis.<p>Secondly, asymptotic symmetries of the Einstein-Yang-Mills system with or without cosmological constant are explicitly worked out in a unified manner in $d$ dimensions. In agreement with a recent conjecture, a Virasoro-Kac-Moody type algebra is found not only in three dimensions but also in the four dimensional asymptotically flat case.<p><p>These two parts of the thesis are supplemented by appendices. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

When calculating scattering amplitudes in gauge and gravitational theories one encounters infrared (IR) divergences associated with massless fields. These are known to be artifacts of constructing a quantum field theory starting with free fields, and the assumption that in the asymptotic limit (i.e. well before and after a scattering event) the incoming and outgoing states are non-interacting. In 1937, Bloch and Nordsieck provided a technical procedure eliminating the IR divergences in the cross-sections. However, this did not address the source of the problem: A detailed analysis reveals that, in quantum electrodynamics (QED) and in perturbative quantum gravity (PQG), the interactions cannot be ignored even in the asymptotic limit. This is due to the infinite range of the massless force-carrying bosons. By taking these asymptotic interactions into account, one can find a picture changing operator that transforms the free Fock states into asymptotically interacting Faddeev- Kulish (FK) states. These FK states are charged (massive) particles surrounded by a “cloud” of soft photons (gravitons) and will render all scattering processes infrared finite already at an S-matrix level. Recently it has been found that the FK states are closely related to asymptotic symmetries. In the case of QED the FK states are eigenstates of the large gauge transformations – U(1) transformations with a non-vanishing transformation parameter at infinity. For PQG the FK states are eigenstates of the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) transformations – the asymptotic symmetry group of an asymptotically flat spacetime. It also appears that the FK states are related the Wilson lines in the Mandelstam quantization scheme. This would allow one to obtain the physical FK states through geometrical or symmetry arguments. We attempt to clarify this relation and present a derivation of the FK states in PQG from the gravitational Wilson line in the eikonal approximation, a result that is novel to this thesis.

The present thesis is divided into three parts. In Part I we address a problem within Higher-Spin Gauge Theory in dimension three: namely, that of computing the asymptotic symmetry algebra of supersymmetric models, describing an infinite spectrum of integer and half-integer higher-spin fields. In Part II we investigate higher-spin theories in dimension four or greater, where we classify the consistent cross interactions between free gauge fermions of arbitrary spin and a photon or a graviton. A third part supplements the bulk of the manuscript with technical appendices. <p><p>Part I is concerned with the Higher-Spin Theory extending the anti-de Sitter orthosymplectic Supergravity in three dimensions. After recalling the construction of the latter we exhibit the structure of the former, and then explain how to generalize the boundary conditions for Supergravity to the higher-spin case. Following the usual procedure, we compute the form of the residual gauge parameter and then identify the Poisson-bracket algebra governing the asymptotic dynamics. It is found to be a nonlinear, supersymmetric algebra of the W-infinity type with same central charge as pure Gravity in the Virasoro sector, which is a subalgebra thereof. The simply supersymmetric case is treated explicitly whereas the details of the extended cases are relegated to the appendices. <p><p>Part II deals with the interaction problem for gauge fermions coupled to Electromagnetism and Gravity in flat spacetime of arbitrary dimension. First we recall the so-called BRST-Antifield techniques, which reformulate the deformation problem as a cohomological one, recasting the familiar Noether procedure for finding out interactions in a mathematically systematic way. We then use these methods to classify and obtain expressions for the gauge-invariant cubic couplings between a symmetric tensor-spinor and a spin-1 and spin-2 gauge field. With no input from previous works, we find the complete list of interaction terms with minimal assumptions and in particular shed light on the quartic obstructions to full consistency. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished