Nöther charges, Brown–York quasilocal energy, and related topics

Abstract

The Lagrangian proposed by York et al. and the covariant first-order Lagrangian for general relativity are reviewed. They both deal with the (vacuum) gravitational field on a reference background and were conjectured to be equivalent. The two corresponding actions are compared and we show that the first one can in fact be obtained from the latter under suitable hypotheses. A conditioned correspondence among Nöther conserved quantities of covariant first-order Lagrangian, Brown–York quasilocal energy and the standard ADM Hamiltonian is also established.