First, observe that the integral depends on the spinor dyad algebraically, thus it is enough to specify the
dyad only at the points of . Obviously,
transforms like a symmetric second rank spinor under
constant
transformations of the dyad
. Second, suppose that the spacetime is flat, and
let
be constant. Then the corresponding 1-form basis
is the constant Cartesian one,
which consists of exact 1-forms. Then since the Bramson superpotential
is the
anti-self-dual part (in the name indices) of
, which is also exact, for such spinor bases
Equation (17
) gives zero. Therefore, the integral of Bramson’s superpotential (17
) measures the
non-integrability of the 1-form basis
, i.e.
is a measure of how much the
actual 1-form basis is ‘distorted’ by the curvature relative to the constant basis of Minkowski
spacetime.
Thus the only question is how to specify a spin frame on to be able to interpret
as angular
momentum. It seems natural to choose those spinor fields that were used in the definition of
the quasi-local energy-momenta in the previous Section 8. At first sight this may appear to
be only an ad hoc idea, but, recalling that in Section 8 we interpreted the elements of the
spin spaces
as the ‘spinor constituents of the quasi-translations of
’, we can
justify such a choice. Based on our experience with the superpotentials for the various conserved
quantities, the quasi-local angular momentum can be expected to be the integral of something like
‘superpotential’
‘quasi-rotation generator’, and the ‘superpotential’ is some expression in the first
derivative of the basic variables, actually the tetrad or spinor basis. Since, however, Bramson’s
superpotential is an algebraic expression of the basic variables, and the number of the derivatives in the
expression for the angular momentum should be one, the angular momentum expressions based on
Bramson’s superpotential must contain the derivative of the ‘quasi-rotations’, i.e. (possibly a
combination of) the ‘quasi-translations’. Since, however, such an expression cannot be sensitive
to the ‘change of the origin’, they can be expected to yield only the spin part of the angular
momentum.
The following two specific constructions differ from each other only in the choice for the spin space
, and correspond to the energy-momentum constructions of the previous Section 8. The third
construction (valid only in the Kerr spacetimes) is based on the sum of two terms, where one is Bramson’s
expression, and uses the spinor fields of Section 8.3. Thus the present section is not independent
of Section 8, and for the discussion of the choice of the spin spaces
we refer to
that.
Another suggestion for the quasi-local spatial angular momentum, proposed by Liu and Yau [253], will
be introduced in Section 10.4.1.
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