S-matrix elements exhibit universal factorization when multiple infrared photons are emitted in scattering processes. We explicitly show that the leading soft factorization of tree-level amplitudes with the emission of any number of soft photons can be interpreted as the Ward identity of the asymptotic symmetry of gauge theory.
The aim of these Lectures is to provide a brief overview of the subject of asymptotic symmetries of gauge and gravity theories in asymptotically flat spacetimes as background material for celestial holography.
We study asymptotic symmetry algebras for classes of three dimensional supergravities with and without cosmological constant. In the first part we generalise some of the non-Dirichlet boundary conditions of $AdS_3$ gravity to extended supergravity theories, and compute their asymptotic symmetries. In particular, we show that the boundary conditions proposed to holographically describe the chiral induced gravity and Liouville gravity do admit extension to the supergravity contexts with appropriate superalgebras as their asymptotic symmetry algebras. In the second part we consider generalisation of the 3d $BMS$ computation to extended supergravities without cosmological constant, and show that their asymptotic symmetry algebras provide examples of nonlinear extended superalgebras containing the $BMS_3$ algebra.
We study the finite distance boundary symmetry current algebra of the most general first order theory of 3d gravity. We show that the space of quadratic generators contains diffeomorphisms but also a notion of dual diffeomorphisms, which together form either a double Witt or centreless BMS$_3$ algebra. The relationship with the usual asymptotic symmetry algebra relies on a duality between the null and angular directions, which is possible thanks to the existence of the dual diffeomorphisms.
We show that the subleading soft photon theorem in a $(d+2)$-dimensional massless abelian gauge theory gives rise to a Ward identity corresponding to divergent large gauge transformations acting on the celestial sphere at null infinity. We further generalize our analysis to $(d+2)$-dimensional non-abelian gauge theories and show that the leading and subleading soft gluon theorem give rise to Ward identities corresponding to asymptotic symmetries of the theory.
We consider the scattering of massless particles coupled to an abelian gauge field in 2n-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. Weinbergs soft photon theorem is recast as Ward identities for infinitely many new nontrivial symmetries of the massless QED S-matrix, with one such identity arising for each propagation direction of the soft photon. These symmetries are identified as large gauge transformations with angle-dependent gauge parameters that are constant along the null generators of null infinity. Almost all of the symmetries are spontaneously broken in the standard vacuum and the soft photons are the corresponding Goldstone bosons. Our result establishes a relationship between soft theorems and asymptotic symmetry groups in any even dimension.