A reference for the covariant Hamiltonian boundary term
  The Hamiltonian for dynamic geometry generates the evolution of a spatial region along a vector field. It includes a boundary term which determines both the value of the Hamiltonian and the boundary conditions. The value gives the quasi-local quantities: energy-momentum, angular-momentum/center-of-mass. The boundary term depends not only on the dynamical variables but also on their reference values; the latter determine the ground state (having vanishing quasi-local quantities). For our preferred boundary term for Einstein's GR we propose 4D isometric matching and extremizing the energy to determine the reference metric and connection values. 
James M. Nester, Chiang-Mei Chen, Jian-Liang Liu, Gang Sun
gr-qc