Holographic reconstruction of flat spacetime

Abstract: The flat/CFT dictionary between the bulk gravitational theory and boundary conformal field theory is systematically developed in this paper. Asymptotically flat spacetime is built up by asymptotically AdS hyperboloid slices in terms of Fefferman Graham coordinates together with soft modes propagating between different slices near the null boundary. Then we construct the flat holography dictionary based on studying Einstein equation at zero and first order and it turns out that these correspond to the description of hard and soft sector for the field theory from the boundary point of view. The explicit expression for energy-stress tensor is also determined by performing holographic renormalisation on the Einstein Hilbert action. By studying the anomalies of the energy-stress tensor, we obtain the leading and subleading contribution to the central charge. Einstein equations in the bulk are related to the Ward identities of the boundary theory and we find that the boundary CFT energy-stress tensor is not conserved due to the existence of radiative soft modes which will generate the energy flow through the null boundary.