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The phase space of 2+1 AdS gravity

We describe what can be called the “universal” phase space of 2+1 AdS gravity, in which the moduli spaces of globally hyperbolic AdS spacetimes with compact Cauchy surface, as well as the moduli spaces of multi black hole spacetimes are realized as submanifolds. Importantly our phase space also includes all Brown-Henneaux excitations on the conformal boundary of asymptotically AdS spacetimes, with Diff+(S1)/SL(2,R)xDiff+(S1)/SL(2,R) contained as a submanifold. Our description of the universal phase space is obtained from results on the correspondence between maximal surfaces in AdS3 and quasi-symmetric homeomorphisms of the unit circle. We find that the phase space can be parametrized by two copies of the universal Teichmuller space T(D), or equivalently by the cotangent bundle over T(D). This yields a symplectic map from T*T(D) to T(D)xT(D) generalizing the well-known Mess map in the compact spatial surface setting. We also relate our parametrization to the Chern-Simons formulation of 2+1 gravity and, infinitesimally, to the holographic (Fefferman-Graham) description. In particular, we relate the charges arising in the holographic description (such as the mass and angular momentum of asymptotically AdS spacetimes) to the periods of holomorphic quadratic differentials arising via the Bers embedding of T(D)xT(D).

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:572632
Date January 2012
CreatorsScarinci, Carlos
PublisherUniversity of Nottingham
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12814/

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