On Conserved Quantities at Spatial Infinity

Abstract

There is a well-known short list of asymptotic conserved quantities for a physical system at spatial infinity. We search for new ones.This is carried outwithin the asymptotic framework of Ashtekar and Romano, in which spatial infinity is represented as a smooth boundary of space-time. We first introduce, for physical fields on space-time,a characterization of their asymptotic behavior as certain fields on this boundary. Conserved quantities at spatial infinity, in turn, are constructed from these fields. We find,in Minkowski space-time, that each of a Klein-Gordon field, a Maxwell field, and a linearized gravitational field yields an entire hierarchy of conserved quantities. Only certain quantities in this hierarchy survive into curved space-time.