title: Conserved charges for gravity with locally anti-de sitter asymptotics
abstract: A new formula for the conserved charges in 3+1 gravity for spacetimes with local anti-de Sitter asymptotic geometry is proposed. It is shown that requiring the action to have an extremum for this class of asymptotia sets the boundary term that must be added to the Lagrangian as the Euler density with a fixed weight factor. The resulting action gives rise to the mass and angular momentum as Noether charges associated to the asymptotic Killing vectors without requiring specification of a reference background in order to have a convergent expression. A consequence of this definition is that any negative constant curvature spacetime has vanishing Noether charges. These results remain valid in the Lambda = 0 limit.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Estudios Cientificos de Santiago, Casilla 16443, Santiago 9, Chile and Universidad Nacional Andres Bello, Sazie 2320, Santiago, Chile.
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Aros
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Contreras
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Olea
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Troncoso
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zanelli