Gravitational Observatories in AdS$_4$

Abstract

We consider four-dimensional general relativity with a negative cosmological constant in the presence of a finite size boundary, $Γ$, for both Euclidean and Lorentzian signature. As our boundary condition, we consider the `conformal' boundary condition that fixes the conformal class of the induced metric at $Γ$ and the trace of the extrinsic curvature, $K(x^m)$. In Lorentzian signature, we must supplement these with appropriate initial data comprising the standard Cauchy data along a spatial slice and, in addition, initial data for a boundary mode that appears due to the presence of the finite size boundary. We perform a linearised analysis of the gravitational field equations for both an $S^2\times \mathbb{R}$ as well as a Minkowskian, $\mathbb{R}^{1,2}$, boundary. In the $S^2\times \mathbb{R}$ case, in addition to the usual AdS$_4$ normal modes, we uncover a novel linearised perturbation, $\boldsymbolω(x^m)$, which can exhibit complex frequencies at sufficiently large angular momentum. Upon moving $Γ$ toward the infinite asymptotic AdS$_4$ boundary, the complex frequencies appear at increasingly large angular momentum and vanish altogether in the strict limit. In the $\mathbb{R}^{2,1}$ case, although we uncover an analogous novel perturbation, we show it does not exhibit complex frequencies. In Euclidean signature, we show that $K(x^m)$ plays the role of a source for $\boldsymbolω(x^m)$. When close to the AdS$_4$ asymptotic boundary, we speculate on the holographic interpretation of $\boldsymbolω(x^m)$.