Angular momentum and supertranslation in general relativity

Abstract

How does one measure the angular momentum carried away by gravitational radiation during the merger of a binary black hole? This has been a subtle issue since the 1960's due to the discovery of ``supertranslation ambiguity": the angular momentum recorded by two distant observers of the same system may not be the same. In this talk, I shall describe how the theory of quasilocal mass and optimal isometric embedding identifies a new definition of angular momentum that is free of any supertranslation ambiguity. This is based on joint work with Po-Ning Chen, Jordan Keller, Ye-Kai Wang, and Shing-Tung Yau.