904 research outputs found
Asymptotically simple solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations in even dimensions
We show that a set of conformally invariant equations derived from the
Fefferman-Graham tensor can be used to construct global solutions of the vacuum
Einstein equations, in all even dimensions. This gives, in particular, a new,
simple proof of Friedrich's result on the future hyperboloidal stability of
Minkowski space-time, and extends its validity to even dimensions.Comment: 25p
Stability in Designer Gravity
We study the stability of designer gravity theories, in which one considers
gravity coupled to a tachyonic scalar with anti-de Sitter boundary conditions
defined by a smooth function W. We construct Hamiltonian generators of the
asymptotic symmetries using the covariant phase space method of Wald et al.and
find they differ from the spinor charges except when W=0. The positivity of the
spinor charge is used to establish a lower bound on the conserved energy of any
solution that satisfies boundary conditions for which has a global minimum.
A large class of designer gravity theories therefore have a stable ground
state, which the AdS/CFT correspondence indicates should be the lowest energy
soliton. We make progress towards proving this, by showing that minimum energy
solutions are static. The generalization of our results to designer gravity
theories in higher dimensions involving several tachyonic scalars is discussed.Comment: 29 page
Further restrictions on the topology of stationary black holes in five dimensions
We place further restriction on the possible topology of stationary
asymptotically flat vacuum black holes in 5 spacetime dimensions. We prove that
the horizon manifold can be either a connected sum of Lens spaces and "handles"
, or the quotient of by certain finite groups of
isometries (with no "handles"). The resulting horizon topologies include Prism
manifolds and quotients of the Poincare homology sphere. We also show that the
topology of the domain of outer communication is a cartesian product of the
time direction with a finite connected sum of 's
and 's, minus the black hole itself. We do not assume the existence of
any Killing vector beside the asymptotically timelike one required by
definition for stationarity.Comment: LaTex, 22 pages, 9 figure
Uniqueness and nonuniqueness of the stationary black holes in 5D Einstein-Maxwell and Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity
In the present paper we investigate the general problem of uniqueness of the
stationary black solutions in 5D Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity with
arbitrary dilaton coupling parameter containing the Einstein-Maxwell gravity as
a particular case. We formulate and prove uniqueness theorems classifying the
stationary black hole solutions in terms of their interval structure, electric
and magnetic charges and the magnetic fluxes. The proofs are based on the
nonpositivity of the Riemann curvature operator on the space of the potentials
which imposes restrictions on the dilaton coupling parameter.Comment: 21 pages, LaTe
Supersymmetric Field-Theoretic Models on a Supermanifold
We propose the extension of some structural aspects that have successfully
been applied in the development of the theory of quantum fields propagating on
a general spacetime manifold so as to include superfield models on a
supermanifold. We only deal with the limited class of supermanifolds which
admit the existence of a smooth body manifold structure. Our considerations are
based on the Catenacci-Reina-Teofillatto-Bryant approach to supermanifolds. In
particular, we show that the class of supermanifolds constructed by
Bonora-Pasti-Tonin satisfies the criterions which guarantee that a
supermanifold admits a Hausdorff body manifold. This construction is the
closest to the physicist's intuitive view of superspace as a manifold with some
anticommuting coordinates, where the odd sector is topologically trivial. The
paper also contains a new construction of superdistributions and useful results
on the wavefront set of such objects. Moreover, a generalization of the
spectral condition is formulated using the notion of the wavefront set of
superdistributions, which is equivalent to the requirement that all of the
component fields satisfy, on the body manifold, a microlocal spectral condition
proposed by Brunetti-Fredenhagen-K\"ohler.Comment: Final version to appear in J.Math.Phy
When flux standards go wild: white dwarfs in the age of Kepler
White dwarf stars have been used as flux standards for decades, thanks to
their staid simplicity. We have empirically tested their photometric stability
by analyzing the light curves of 398 high-probability candidates and
spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs observed during the original Kepler
mission and later with K2 Campaigns 0-8. We find that the vast majority (>97
per cent) of non-pulsating and apparently isolated white dwarfs are stable to
better than 1 per cent in the Kepler bandpass on 1-hr to 10-d timescales,
confirming that these stellar remnants are useful flux standards. From the
cases that do exhibit significant variability, we caution that binarity,
magnetism, and pulsations are three important attributes to rule out when
establishing white dwarfs as flux standards, especially those hotter than
30,000 K.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
Changing Human Behavior to Prevent Disease: The Importance of Targeting Automatic Processes
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.122691
A tale of two superpotentials: Stability and Instability in Designer Gravity
We investigate the stability of asymptotically anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to tachyonic scalar fields with mass at or slightly above the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. The boundary conditions in these ``designer gravity'' theories are defined in terms of an arbitrary function W. Previous work had suggested that the energy in designer gravity is bounded below if i) W has a global minimum and ii) the scalar potential admits a superpotential P. More recently, however, certain solutions were found (numerically) to violate the proposed energy bound. We resolve the discrepancy by observing that a given scalar potential can admit two possible branches of the corresponding superpotential, P_{\pm}. When there is a P_- branch, we rigorously prove a lower bound on the energy; the P_+ branch alone is not sufficient. Our numerical investigations i) confirm this picture, ii) confirm other critical aspects of the (complicated) proofs, and iii) suggest that the existence of P_- may in fact be necessary (as well as sufficient) for the energy of a designer gravity theory to be bounded below
- …