Logarithmic Corrections to Kerr Thermodynamics.

Recent work has shown that loop corrections from massless particles generate 3/2logT_{Hawking} corrections to black hole entropy which dominate the thermodynamics of cold near-extreme charged black holes. Here we adapt this analysis to near-extreme Kerr black holes. Like AdS_{2}×S^{2}, the near-horizon extreme Kerr (NHEK) metric has a family of normalizable zero modes corresponding to reparametrizations of boundary time. The path integral over these zero modes leads to an infrared divergence in the one-loop approximation to the Euclidean NHEK partition function. We regulate this divergence by retaining the leading finite temperature correction in the NHEK scaling limit. This "not-NHEK" geometry lifts the eigenvalues of the zero modes, rendering the path integral infrared finite. The quantum-corrected near-extremal entropy exhibits 3/2logT_{Hawking} behavior characteristic of the Schwarzian model and predicts a lifting of the ground state degeneracy for the extremal Kerr black hole.

Celestial Dual for Maximal Helicity Violating Amplitudes.

It is shown that a 2D conformal field theory consisting of a central charge c Liouville theory, a chiral level one, rank N Kac-Moody algebra, and a weight -3/2 free fermion holographically generate 4D maximal helicity violating tree-level scattering amplitudes. The correlators of this 2D conformal field theory give directly the 4D leaf amplitudes associated to a single hyperbolic slice of flat space. The 4D celestial amplitudes arise in a large-N and semiclassical large-c limit, according to the holographic dictionary, as a translationally invariant combination of leaf amplitudes. A step in the demonstration is showing that the semiclassical limit of Liouville correlators are given by contact 3D anti-de Sitter Witten diagrams.

w_{1+∞} Algebra and the Celestial Sphere: Infinite Towers of Soft Graviton, Photon, and Gluon Symmetries.

It is shown that the infinite tower of tree-level plus-helicity soft graviton symmetries in asymptotically flat 4D quantum gravity can be organized into a single chiral 2D Kac-Moody symmetry based on the wedge algebra of w_{1+∞}, which naturally acts on the celestial sphere at null infinity. The infinite towers of soft photon or gluon symmetries also transform irreducibly under w_{1+∞}.

Color Memory: A Yang-Mills Analog of Gravitational Wave Memory.

A transient color flux across null infinity in classical Yang-Mills theory is considered. It is shown that a pair of test "quarks" initially in a color singlet generically acquire net color as a result of the flux. A nonlinear formula is derived for the relative color rotation of the quarks. For a weak color flux, the formula linearizes to the Fourier transform of the soft gluon theorem. This color memory effect is the Yang-Mills analog of the gravitational memory effect.

2D Stress Tensor for 4D Gravity.

We use the subleading soft-graviton theorem to construct an operator T_{zz} whose insertion in the four-dimensional tree-level quantum gravity S matrix obeys the Virasoro-Ward identities of the energy momentum tensor of a two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT_{2}). The celestial sphere at Minkowskian null infinity plays the role of the Euclidean sphere of the CFT_{2}, with the Lorentz group acting as the unbroken SL(2,C) subgroup.

Magnetic Corrections to the Soft Photon Theorem.

The soft photon theorem, in its standard form, requires corrections when the asymptotic particle states carry magnetic charges. These corrections are deduced using electromagnetic duality and the resulting soft formula conjectured to be exact for all Abelian gauge theories. Recent work has shown that the standard soft theorem implies an infinity of conserved electric charges. The associated symmetries are identified as "large" electric gauge transformations. Here the magnetic corrections to the soft theorem are shown to imply a second infinity of conserved magnetic charges. The associated symmetries are identified as large magnetic gauge transformations. The large magnetic symmetries are naturally subsumed in a complexification of the electric ones.

Soft Hair on Black Holes.

It has recently been shown that Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs supertranslation symmetries imply an infinite number of conservation laws for all gravitational theories in asymptotically Minkowskian spacetimes. These laws require black holes to carry a large amount of soft (i.e., zero-energy) supertranslation hair. The presence of a Maxwell field similarly implies soft electric hair. This Letter gives an explicit description of soft hair in terms of soft gravitons or photons on the black hole horizon, and shows that complete information about their quantum state is stored on a holographic plate at the future boundary of the horizon. Charge conservation is used to give an infinite number of exact relations between the evaporation products of black holes which have different soft hair but are otherwise identical. It is further argued that soft hair which is spatially localized to much less than a Planck length cannot be excited in a physically realizable process, giving an effective number of soft degrees of freedom proportional to the horizon area in Planck units.

Low's subleading soft theorem as a symmetry of QED.

It was shown by Low in the 1950s that the subleading terms of soft-photon S-matrix elements obey a universal linear relation. In this Letter, we give a new interpretation to this old relation, for the case of massless QED, as an infinitesimal symmetry of the S matrix. The symmetry is shown to be locally generated by a vector field on the conformal sphere at null infinity. Explicit expressions are constructed for the associated charges as integrals over null infinity and shown to generate the symmetry. These charges are local generalizations of electric and magnetic dipole charges.

Chiral scale and conformal invariance in 2D quantum field theory.

It is well known that a local, unitary Poincaré-invariant 2D quantum field theory with a global scaling symmetry and a discrete non-negative spectrum of scaling dimensions necessarily has both a left and a right local conformal symmetry. In this Letter, we consider a chiral situation beginning with only a left global scaling symmetry and do not assume Lorentz invariance. We find that a left conformal symmetry is still implied, while right translations are enhanced either to a right conformal symmetry or a left U(1) Kac-Moody symmetry.

Polarization whorls from M87* at the event horizon telescope.

The event horizon telescope (EHT) is expected to soon produce polarimetric images of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the neighbouring galaxy M87. There are indications that this black hole is rapidly spinning. General relativity predicts that such a high-spin black hole has an emergent conformal symmetry near its event horizon. In this paper, we use this symmetry to analytically predict the polarized near-horizon emissions to be seen at the EHT and find a distinctive pattern of whorls aligned with the spin.

Universal interferometric signatures of a black hole's photon ring.

The Event Horizon Telescope image of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 is dominated by a bright, unresolved ring. General relativity predicts that embedded within this image lies a thin "photon ring," which is composed of an infinite sequence of self-similar subrings that are indexed by the number of photon orbits around the black hole. The subrings approach the edge of the black hole "shadow," becoming exponentially narrower but weaker with increasing orbit number, with seemingly negligible contributions from high-order subrings. Here, we show that these subrings produce strong and universal signatures on long interferometric baselines. These signatures offer the possibility of precise measurements of black hole mass and spin, as well as tests of general relativity, using only a sparse interferometric array.

Microscopic entropy of the black ring.

A surprising new seven-parameter supersymmetric black ring solution of five-dimensional supergravity has recently been discovered. In this paper, M theory is used to give an exact microscopic accounting of its entropy.