Bremen 2017 – scientific programme

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PV: Plenarvorträge

PV III

PV III: Plenary Talk

Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 11:00–11:45, HS 2010

Gravitational Memory, Information, and Black Holes — •Stefan Hollands — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Leipzig, Brüderstr. 16, Leipzig D-04103

A burst of gravitational radiation passing through an arrangement of freely falling test masses far from the source will cause a permanent displacement of the masses, called the ``gravitational memory''. It has recently been found that this memory is closely related to the change in the so called ``super-translation'' charge carried by the spacetime, where ``super-translations'' here refer to an unexpected enlargement of the asymptotic symmetries of general relativity beyond the expected asymptotic Poincare-transformations, known already since the work of Bondi et al. in the early 60s (no relation with ``supersymmetry''). I will describe these concepts from an intuitive perspective and point out that super-translations, as well as gravitational memory, are a phenomenon that is unique to relativity in 3+1, but not higher, dimensions. I close the talk by explaining the relation between these results and recent proposals connecting super translations to the Information Loss Paradox concerning Hawking-evaporating black holes.