Witten-Nester energy in topologically massive gravity
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abstract
We formulate topologically massive supergravity with a cosmological constant in the first-order formalism and construct the Noether supercurrent and superpotential associated with its local supersymmetry. Using these results, we construct in ordinary topologically massive gravity the Witten-Nester integral for conserved charges containing spinors which satisfy a generalized version of the Witten equation on the initial value surface. We show that the Witten-Nester charge, represented as an integral over the boundary of the initial value surface, produces the Abbott-Deser-Tekin energy for asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes. We consider all values of the Chern-Simons coupling constant, including the critical value known as the chiral point, and study the cases of standard Brown-Henneaux boundary conditions, as well as their weaker version that allows a slower fall-off. Studying the Witten-Nester energy as a bulk integral over the initial value surface instead, we find a bound on the energy, and through it the sufficient condition for the positivity of the energy. In particular, we find that spacetimes of Petrov type N that admit globally well-defined solutions of the generalized Witten equation have positive energy. 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.
