Tractor geometry of asymptotically flat spacetimes

Abstract

In a recent work it was shown that conformal Carroll geometries are canonically equipped with a null-tractor bundle generalizing the tractor bundle of conformal geometry. We here show that in the case of the conformal boundary of an asymptotically flat spacetime of any dimension d>=3, this null-tractor bundle over null infinity can be canonically derived from the interior spacetime geometry. As was previously discussed, compatible normal connections on the null-tractor bundle are not unique: We prove that they are in fact in one-to-one correspondence with the germ of the asymptotically flat spacetimes to leading order. In dimension d=3 the tractor connection invariantly encodes a choice of mass and angular momentum aspect, in dimension d>=4 a choice of asymptotic shear. In dimension d=4 the presence of tractor curvature correspond to gravitational radiation. Even thought these results are by construction geometrical and coordinate invariant, we give explicit expressions in BMS coordinates for concreteness.