Giovanni Arcioni

Holography in asymptotically flat spacetimes and the BMS group

In a previous paper (Arcioni G and Dappiaggi C 2003 Preprint hep-th/0306142) we have started to explore the holographic principle in the case of asymptotically flat spacetimes and analysed, in particular, different aspects of the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) group, namely the asymptotic symmetry group of any asymptotically flat spacetime. We continue this investigation in this paper. Having in mind an S-matrix approach with future and past null infinity playing the role of holographic screens on which the BMS group acts, we connect the IR sectors of the gravitational field with the representation theory of the BMS group. We analyse the (complicated) mapping between bulk and boundary symmetries pointing out differences with respect to the anti-de Sitter (AdS)/ CFT set up. Finally, we construct a BMS phase space and a free Hamiltonian for fields transforming with respect to BMS representations. The last step is supposed to be an explorative investigation of the boundary data living on the degenerate null manifold at infinity.

A Diffusion Model for SU(N) QCD Screening

We consider a phenomenological model for the dynamics of Wilson loops in pure SU(N) QCD where the expectation value of the loop is the average over an interacting diffusion process on the group manifold SU(N). The interaction is provided by an arbitrary potential that generates the transition from the Casimir scaling regime into the screening phase of the fourdimensional gauge theory. The potential is required to respect the underlying center symmetry of the gauge theory, and this predicts screening of arbitrary SU(N) representations to the corresponding antisymmetric representations of the same N-ality. The stable strings before the onset of screening are therefore the k-strings. In the process we find a non-trivial but solvable modification of the QCD2 matrix model that involves an arbitrary potential.

Holography and BMS field theory

We study the key ingredients of a candidate holographic correspondence in asymptotically flat spacetimes; in particular, we develop the kinematical and the classical dynamical data of a BMS invariant field theory living at null infinity.