Berry Phases on Virasoro Orbits

We point out that unitary representations of the Virasoro algebra contain Berry phases obtained by acting on a primary state with conformal transformations that trace a closed path on a Virasoro coadjoint orbit. These phases can be computed exactly thanks to the Maurer-Cartan form on the Virasoro group, and they persist after combining left- and right-moving sectors. Thinking of Virasoro representations as particles in AdS_3 dressed with boundary gravitons, the Berry phases associated with Brown-Henneaux diffeomorphisms provide a gravitational extension of Thomas precession.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figures. v2: examples moved to appendix + minor clarifications. Published in JHE

Notes on the BMS group in three dimensions: I. Induced representations

The Bondi-Metzner-Sachs group in three dimensions is the symmetry group of asymptotically flat three-dimensional spacetimes. It is the semi-direct product of the diffeomorphism group of the circle with the space of its adjoint representation, embedded as an abelian normal subgroup. The structure of the group suggests to study induced representations; we show here that they are associated with the well-known coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group and provide explicit representations in terms of one-particle states.Comment: 33 pages, LaTeX file. v3: Minimal changes in the introduction. Version published in JHE

Notes on the BMS group in three dimensions: II. Coadjoint representation

The coadjoint representation of the BMS$_3$ group, which governs the covariant phase space of three-dimensional asymptotically flat gravity, is investigated. In particular, we classify coadjoint BMS$_3$ orbits and show that intrinsic angular momentum is free of supertranslation ambiguities. Finally, the link with induced representations upon geometric quantization is discussed.Comment: 22 pages, references added, accepted for publication in JHEP. v3: Minor typos corrected, matches published versio