Comparison between various notions of conserved charges in asymptotically AdS-spacetimes

Abstract

We derive hamiltionian generators of asymptotic symmetries for general relativity with asymptotic AdS boundary conditions using the ``covariant phase space'' method of Wald et al. We then compare our results with other definitions that have been proposed in the literature. We find that our definition agrees with that proposed by Ashtekar et al, with the spinor definition, and with the background dependent definition of Henneaux and Teitelboim. Our definition disagrees with the one obtained from the ``counterterm subtraction method,'' but the difference is found to consist only of a ``constant offset'' that is determined entirely in terms of the boundary metric. We finally discuss and justify our boundary conditions by a linear perturbation analysis, and we comment on generalizations of our boundary conditions, as well as inclusion of matter fields.