Carrollian manifolds and null infinity: a view from Cartan geometry

Abstract We discuss three different (conformally) Carrollian geometries and their relation to null infinity from the unifying perspective of Cartan geometry. Null infinity per se comes with numerous redundancies in its intrinsic geometry and the two other Carrollian geometries can be recovered by making successive choices of gauge. This clarifies the extent to which one can think of null infinity as being a (strongly) Carrollian geometry and we investigate the implications for the corresponding Cartan geometries. The perspective taken, which is that characteristic data for gravity at null infinity are equivalent to a Cartan geometry for the Poincaré group, gives a precise geometrical content to the fundamental fact that ‘gravitational radiation is the obstruction to having the Poincaré group as asymptotic symmetries’.