Abstract

Mass and other conserved Noether charges are discussed for solutions of gravity theories with locally anti-de Sitter (AdS) asymptotics in 2n dimensions. The action is supplemented with a boundary term whose purpose is to guarantee that it reaches an extremum on the classical solutions, provided the space-time is locally AdS space-time at the boundary. It is also shown that if space-time is locally AdS at spatial infinity, the conserved charges are finite and properly normalized without requiring subtraction of a reference background. In this approach, Noether charges associated with Lorentz and diffeomorphism invariance vanish identically for constant curvature space-times. The case of a zero cosmological constant is obtained as a limit of AdS space-time, where ? plays the role of a regulator. ©2000 The American Physical Society.