  Recently it has been shown that infrared divergences in the conventional
S-matrix elements of gauge and gravitational theories arise from a violation of
the conservation laws associated with large gauge symmetries. These infrared
divergences can be cured by using the Faddeev-Kulish (FK) asymptotic states as
the basis for S-matrix elements. Motivated by this connection, we study the
action of BMS supertranslations on the FK asymptotic states of perturbative
quantum gravity. We compute the BMS charge of the FK states and show that it
characterizes the superselection sector to which the state belongs.
Conservation of the BMS charge then implies that there is no transition between
different superselection sectors, hence showing that the FK graviton clouds
implement the necessary vacuum transition induced by the scattering process.
