BMS Particles in Three Dimensions

Understand

This thesis is devoted to the group-theoretic aspects of three-dimensional quantum gravity on Anti-de Sitter and Minkowskian backgrounds.

• In particular we describe the relation between unitary representations of asymptotic symmetry groups and gravitational perturbations around a space-time metric.
• In the asymptotically flat case this leads to "BMS particles", representing standard relativistic particles dressed with gravitational degrees of freedom accounted for by coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group.
• Their thermodynamics are described by BMS characters, which coincide with gravitational one-loop partition functions.