Membranes on Calibrations

M2-branes can blow up into BPS funnels that end on calibrated intersections of M5-branes. In this quick note, we make the observation that the constraints required for the consistency of these solutions are automatic in Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson (BLG) theory, thanks to the fundamental identity and the supersymmetry of the calibration. We use this to explain how the previous ad hoc fuzzy funnel constructions emerge in this picture, and make some comments about the role of the 3-algebra trace form in the derivation.Comment: 9 pages, no figures; references added, minor change

A Comment on Kerr-CFT and Wald Entropy

We point out that the entropies of black holes in general diffeomorphism invariant theories, computed using the Kerr-CFT correspondence and the Wald formula (as implemented in the entropy function formalism), need not always agree. A simple way to illustrate this is to consider Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity in four dimensions, where the Gauss-Bonnet term is topological. This means that the central charge of Kerr-CFT computed in the Barnich-Brandt-Compere formalism remains the same as in Einstein gravity, while the entropy computed using the entropy function gives a universal correction proportional to the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. We argue that at least in this example, the Kerr-CFT result is the physically reasonable one. The resolution to this discrepancy might lie in a better understanding of boundary terms.Comment: 11 pages, v2,3: refs added, minor change

Higher Spin Resolution of a Toy Big Bang

Diffeomorphisms preserve spacetime singularities, whereas higher spin symmetries need not. Since three dimensional de Sitter space has quotients that have big-bang/big-crunch singularities and since dS_3-gravity can be written as an SL(2,C) Chern-Simons theory, we investigate SL(3,C) Chern-Simons theory as a higher-spin context in which these singularities might get resolved. As in the case of higher spin black holes in AdS_3, the solutions are invariantly characterized by their holonomies. We show that the dS_3 quotient singularity can be de-singularized by an SL(3,C) gauge transformation that preserves the holonomy: this is a higher spin resolution the cosmological singularity. Our work deals exclusively with the bulk theory, and is independent of the subtleties involved in defining a CFT_2 dual to dS_3 in the sense of dS/CFT.Comment: v2-v3: typos removed, refs added. v4: minor improvements, Phys Rev D version, v5: one more typo fixed, footnote adde

A Neumann Boundary Term for Gravity

The Gibbons-Hawking-York (GHY) boundary term makes the Dirichlet problem for gravity well defined, but no such general term seems to be known for Neumann boundary conditions. In this paper, we view Neumann {\em not} as fixing the normal derivative of the metric ("velocity") at the boundary, but as fixing the functional derivative of the action with respect to the boundary metric ("momentum"). This leads directly to a new boundary term for gravity: the trace of the extrinsic curvature with a specific dimension-dependent coefficient. In three dimensions this boundary term reduces to a "one-half" GHY term noted in the literature previously, and we observe that our action translates precisely to the Chern-Simons action with no extra boundary terms. In four dimensions the boundary term vanishes, giving a natural Neumann interpretation to the standard Einstein-Hilbert action without boundary terms. We argue that in light of AdS/CFT, ours is a natural approach for defining a "microcanonical" path integral for gravity in the spirit of the (pre-AdS/CFT) work of Brown and York.Comment: v3: emphasized that a covariant notion of Neumann boundary condition inevitably leads to our boundary term. v4: more ref