We provide a fully covariant expression for the diffeomorphic charge in four-dimensional anti-de Sitter gravity, when the Gauss-Bonnet and Pontryagin terms are added to the action. The couplings of these topological invariants are such that the Weyl tensor and its dual appear in the on-shell variation of the action and such that the action is stationary for asymptotic (anti-)self-dual solutions in the Weyl tensor. In analogy with Euclidean electromagnetism, whenever the self-duality condition is global, both the action and the total charge are identically vanishing. Therefore, for such configurations, the magnetic mass equals the Ashtekhar-Magnon-Das definition.

In this work two new families of non-singular or regular black hole solutions are displayed. These black holes behave as de Sitter space near its center and have a well defined AdS asymptotic region...

We present exact solutions to Vasiliev’s bosonic higher spin gravity equations in four dimensions with positive and negative cosmological constant that admit an interpretation in terms of domain walls, quasi-instantons and Friedman-Robertson-Walker (FRW) backgrounds. Their isometry algebras are infinite dimensional higher-spin extensions of spacetime isometries generated by six Killing vectors. The solutions presented are obtained by using a method of holomorphic factorization in noncommutative twistor space and gauge functions. In interpreting the solutions in terms of Fronsdal-type fields in space-time, a field-dependent higher spin transformation is required, which is implemented at leading order. To this order, the scalar field solves Klein-Gordon equation with conformal mass in (A)dS ₄ . We interpret the FRW solution with de Sitter asymptotics in the context of inflationary cosmology and we expect that the domain wall and FRW solutions are associated with spontaneously broken scaling symmetries in their holographic description. We observe that the factorization method provides a convenient framework for setting up a perturbation theory around the exact solutions, and we propose that the nonlinear completion of particle excitations over FRW and domain wall solutions requires black hole-like states.

We continue the study of a special entry in the AdS/CFT dictionary, namely a holographic formula relating the functional determinant of the scattering operator in an asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter (ALAdS) space to a relative functional determinant of the scalar Laplacian in the bulk. A heuristic derivation of the formula involves a one-loop quantum effect in the bulk and the corresponding sub-leading correction at large N on the boundary. We presently explore a higher-dimensional version of the spinning BTZ black hole obtained as a quotient of hyperbolic space by a discrete subgroup of isometries generated by a loxodromic (or hyperbolic) element consisting of dilation (temperature) and torsion angles (spinning). The bulk computation is done using heat-kernel techniques and fractional calculus. At the boundary, we get a recursive scheme that allows us to range from the non-spinning to the full-fledged spinning geometries. The determinants are compactly expressed in terms of an associated (Patterson-)Selberg zeta function and a connection to quasi-normal frequencies is discussed.