Effective Conformal Descriptions of Black Hole Entropy

It is no longer considered surprising that black holes have temperatures and entropies. What remains surprising, though, is the universality of these thermodynamic properties: their exceptionally simple and general form, and the fact that they can be derived from many very different descriptions of the underlying microscopic degrees of freedom. I review the proposal that this universality arises from an approximate conformal symmetry, which permits an effective "conformal dual" description that is largely independent of the microscopic details.Comment: 27 pages; solicited review article, to appear in Entrop

Hamiltonian evolution and quantization for extremal black holes

We present and contrast two distinct ways of including extremal black holes in a Lorentzian Hamiltonian quantization of spherically symmetric Einstein-Maxwell theory. First, we formulate the classical Hamiltonian dynamics with boundary conditions appropriate for extremal black holes only. The Hamiltonian contains no surface term at the internal infinity, for reasons related to the vanishing of the extremal hole surface gravity, and quantization yields a vanishing black hole entropy. Second, we give a Hamiltonian quantization that incorporates extremal black holes as a limiting case of nonextremal ones, and examine the classical limit in terms of wave packets. The spreading of the packets, even the ones centered about extremal black holes, is consistent with continuity of the entropy in the extremal limit, and thus with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy even for the extremal holes. The discussion takes place throughout within Lorentz-signature spacetimes.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX using REVTeX v3.1. (v2: Reference added.

Non-uniqueness, Counterrotation, and Negative Horizon Mass of Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons Black Holes

Stationary black holes in 5-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory possess surprising properties. When considering the Chern-Simons coefficient $\lambda$ as a parameter, two critical values of $\lambda$ appear: the supergravity value $\lambda_{\rm SG}=1$, and the value $\lambda=2$. At $\lambda=1$, supersymmetric black holes with vanishing horizon angular velocity, but finite angular momentum exist. As $\lambda$ increases beyond $\lambda_{\rm SG}$ a rotational instability arises, and counterrotating black holes appear, whose horizon rotates in the opposite sense to the angular momentum. Thus supersymmetry is associated with the borderline between stability and instability. At $\lambda=2$ rotating black holes with vanishing angular momentum emerge. Beyond $\lambda=2$ black holes may possess a negative horizon mass, while their total mass is positive. Charged rotating black holes with vanishing gyromagnetic ratio appear, and black holes are no longer uniquely characterized by their global charges.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, MPLA style, invited review for Modern Physics Letters

Negative Horizon Mass for Rotating Black Holes

Charged rotating black holes of Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory in odd dimensions, $D \ge 5$, may possess a negative horizon mass, while their total mass is positive. This surprising feature is related to the existence of counterrotating solutions, where the horizon angular velocity $\Omega$ and the angular momentum $J$ possess opposite signs. Black holes may further possess vanishing horizon angular velocity while they have finite angular momentum, or they may possess finite horizon angular velocity while their angular momentum vanishes. In D=9 even non-static black holes with $\Omega=J=0$ appear. Charged rotating black holes with vanishing gyromagnetic ratio exist, and black holes need no longer be uniquely characterized by their global charges.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure

Pair production of scalars around near-extremal Kerr-Sen black holes

We investigate the charged scalar pair production near the horizon of a near-extremal Kerr-Sen black holes. The condition for pair production to occur has relation to the violation of Breitenlohner-Freedman bound in an AdS$_2$ space. The method employed in this work has been used to show the pair production in the near-horizon of a near-extremal Kerr-Newman black hole and its non-rotating case as well. We also discuss the static limit of our result.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

The Quantum Physics of Black Holes: Results from String Theory

We review recent progress in our understanding of the physics of black holes. In particular, we discuss the ideas from string theory that explain the entropy of black holes from a counting of microstates of the hole, and the related derivation of unitary Hawking radiation from such holes.Comment: 49 pages, Latex, 4 figures, (Review article

Zero Temperature Limit of Holographic Superconductors

We consider holographic superconductors whose bulk description consists of gravity minimally coupled to a Maxwell field and charged scalar field with general potential. We give an analytic argument that there is no "hard gap": the real part of the conductivity at low frequency remains nonzero (although typically exponentially small) even at zero temperature. We also numerically construct the gravitational dual of the ground state of some holographic superconductors. Depending on the charge and dimension of the condensate, the infrared theory can have emergent conformal or just Poincare symmetry. In all cases studied, the area of the horizon of the dual black hole goes to zero in the extremal limit, consistent with a nondegenerate ground state.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure

An Inhomogeneous Transference Principle and Diophantine Approximation

In a landmark paper, D.Y. Kleinbock and G.A. Margulis established the fundamental Baker-Sprindzuk conjecture on homogeneous Diophantine approximation on manifolds. Subsequently, there has been dramatic progress in this area of research. However, the techniques developed to date do not seem to be applicable to inhomogeneous approximation. Consequently, the theory of inhomogeneous Diophantine approximation on manifolds remains essentially non-existent. In this paper we develop an approach that enables us to transfer homogeneous statements to inhomogeneous ones. This is rather surprising as the inhomogeneous theory contains the homogeneous theory and so is more general. As a consequence, we establish the inhomogeneous analogue of the Baker-Sprindzuk conjecture. Furthermore, we prove a complete inhomogeneous version of the profound theorem of Kleinbock, Lindenstrauss & Weiss on the extremality of friendly measures. The results obtained in this paper constitute the first step towards developing a coherent inhomogeneous theory for manifolds in line with the homogeneous theory.Comment: 37 pages: a final section on further developments has been adde