The flat limit of three dimensional asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes

Understand

In order to get a better understanding of holographic properties of gravitational theories with a vanishing cosmological constant, we analyze in detail the relation between asymptotically anti-de Sitter and asymptotically flat spacetimes in three dimensions.

• This relation is somewhat subtle because the limit of vanishing cosmological constant cannot be naively taken in standard Fefferman-Graham coordinates.
• After reformulating the standard anti-de Sitter results in Robinson-Trautman coordinates, a suitably modified Penrose limit is shown to connect both asymptotic regimes.