117 research outputs found
Classical and quantum properties of a 2-sphere singularity
Recently Boehmer and Lobo have shown that a metric due to Florides, which has
been used as an interior Schwarzschild solution, can be extended to reveal a
classical singularity that has the form of a two-sphere. Here the singularity
is shown to be a scalar curvature singularity that is both timelike and
gravitationally weak. It is also shown to be a quantum singularity because the
Klein-Gordon operator associated with quantum mechanical particles approaching
the singularity is not essentially self-adjoint.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, minor corrections, final versio
Systematic thermal reduction of neutronization in core-collapse supernovae
We investigate to what extent the temperature dependence of the nuclear
symmetry energy can affect the neutronization of the stellar core prior to
neutrino trapping during gravitational collapse. To this end, we implement a
one-zone simulation to follow the collapse until beta equilibrium is reached
and the lepton fraction remains constant. Since the strength of electron
capture on the neutron-rich nuclei associated to the supernova scenario is
still an open issue, we keep it as a free parameter. We find that the
temperature dependence of the symmetry energy consistently yields a small
reduction of deleptonization, which corresponds to a systematic effect on the
shock wave energetics: the gain in dissociation energy of the shock has a small
yet non-negligible value of about 0.4 foe (1 foe = 10^51 erg) and this result
is almost independent from the strength of nuclear electron capture. The
presence of such a systematic effect and its robustness under changes of the
parameters of the one-zone model are significative enough to justify further
investigations with detailed numerical simulations of supernova explosions.Comment: 15 pages, 2 tables, 3 figure
Schwinger-Keldysh Propagators from AdS/CFT Correspondence
We demonstrate how to compute real-time Green's functions for a class of
finite temperature field theories from their AdS gravity duals. In particular,
we reproduce the two-by-two Schwinger-Keldysh matrix propagator from a gravity
calculation. Our methods should work also for computing higher point Lorentzian
signature correlators. We elucidate the boundary condition subtleties which
hampered previous efforts to build a Lorentzian-signature AdS/CFT
correspondence. For two-point correlators, our construction is automatically
equivalent to the previously formulated prescription for the retarded
propagator.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, references added; to appear in JHE
The dynamics of quark-gluon plasma and AdS/CFT
In these pedagogical lectures, we present the techniques of the AdS/CFT
correspondence which can be applied to the study of real time dynamics of a
strongly coupled plasma system. These methods are based on solving
gravitational Einstein's equations on the string/gravity side of the AdS/CFT
correspondence. We illustrate these techniques with applications to the
boost-invariant expansion of a plasma system. We emphasize the common
underlying AdS/CFT description both in the large proper time regime where
hydrodynamic dynamics dominates, and in the small proper time regime where the
dynamics is far from equilibrium. These AdS/CFT methods provide a fascinating
arena interrelating General Relativity phenomenae with strongly coupled gauge
theory physics.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures. Lectures at the 5th Aegean summer school, `From
gravity to thermal gauge theories: the AdS/CFT correspondence'. To appear in
the proceedings in `Lecture Notes in Physics
A New Cosmological Scenario in String Theory
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and
an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and
the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past
(future) horizon. The solutions are naturally embedded in string and M-theory.
In the particular case of a two-dimensional cosmology, space-time is flat with
an identification under boost and translation transformations. We consider the
corresponding string theory orbifold and calculate the modular invariant
one-loop partition function. In this case there is a strong parallel with the
BTZ black hole. The higher dimensional cosmologies have a time-like curvature
singularity in the intermediate region. In some cases the string coupling can
be made small throughout all of space-time but string corrections become
important at the singularity. This happens where string winding modes become
light which could resolve the singularity. The new proposed space-time casual
structure could have implications for cosmology, independently of string
theory.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures; v2: Added new subsection relating
two-dimensional model to BTZ black hole, typos corrected and references
added; v3: minor corrections, PRD versio
Quotients of AdS_{p+1} x S^q: causally well-behaved spaces and black holes
Starting from the recent classification of quotients of Freund--Rubin
backgrounds in string theory of the type AdS_{p+1} x S^q by one-parameter
subgroups of isometries, we investigate the physical interpretation of the
associated quotients by discrete cyclic subgroups. We establish which quotients
have well-behaved causal structures, and of those containing closed timelike
curves, which have interpretations as black holes. We explain the relation to
previous investigations of quotients of asymptotically flat spacetimes and
plane waves, of black holes in AdS and of Godel-type universes.Comment: 48 pages; v2: minor typos correcte
Dirac quasinormal modes of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om de Sitter black hole
The quasinormal modes of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om de Sitter black hole for
the massless Dirac fields are studied using the P\"oshl-Teller potential
approximation. We find that the magnitude of the imaginary part of the
quasinormal frequencies decreases as the cosmological constant or the orbital
angular momentum increases, but it increases as the charge or the overtone
number increases. An interesting feature is that the imaginary part is almost
linearly related to the real part as the cosmological constant changes for
fixed charge, and the linearity becomes better as the orbital angular momentum
increases. We also prove exactly that the Dirac quasinormal frequencies are the
same for opposite chirality.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, Phys. Rev. D in pres
Moduli and (un)attractor black hole thermodynamics
We investigate four-dimensional spherically symmetric black hole solutions in
gravity theories with massless, neutral scalars non-minimally coupled to gauge
fields. In the non-extremal case, we explicitly show that, under the variation
of the moduli, the scalar charges appear in the first law of black hole
thermodynamics. In the extremal limit, the near horizon geometry is
and the entropy does not depend on the values of moduli at
infinity. We discuss the attractor behaviour by using Sen's entropy function
formalism as well as the effective potential approach and their relation with
the results previously obtained through special geometry method. We also argue
that the attractor mechanism is at the basis of the matching between the
microscopic and macroscopic entropies for the extremal non-BPS Kaluza-Klein
black hole.Comment: 36 pages, no figures, V2: minor changes, misprints corrected,
expanded references; V3: sections 4.3 and 4.5 added; V4: minor changes,
matches the published versio
Superstrings on NS5 backgrounds, deformed AdS3 and holography
We study a non-standard decoupling limit of the D1/D5-brane system, which
interpolates between the near-horizon geometry of the D1/D5 background and the
near-horizon limit of the pure D5-brane geometry. The S-dual description of
this background is actually an exactly solvable two-dimensional (worldsheet)
conformal field theory: {null-deformed SL(2,R)} x SU(2) x T^4 or K3. This model
is free of strong-coupling singularities. By a careful treatment of the
SL(2,R), based on the better-understood SL(2,R) / U(1) coset, we obtain the
full partition function for superstrings on SL(2,R) x SU(2) x K3. This allows
us to compute the partition functions for the J^3 and J^2 current-current
deformations, as well as the full line of supersymmetric null deformations,
which links the SL(2,R) conformal field theory with linear dilaton theory. The
holographic interpretation of this setup is a renormalization-group flow
between the decoupled NS5-brane world-volume theory in the ultraviolet (Little
String Theory), and the low-energy dynamics of super Yang--Mills string-like
instantons in six dimensions.Comment: JHEP style, 59 pages, 1 figure; v2: minor changes, to appear in JHE
Higher order WKB corrections to black hole entropy in brick wall formalism
We calculate the statistical entropy of a quantum field with an arbitrary
spin propagating on the spherical symmetric black hole background by using the
brick wall formalism at higher orders in the WKB approximation. For general
spins, we find that the correction to the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy
depends logarithmically on the area of the horizon. Furthermore, we apply this
analysis to the Schwarzschild and Schwarzschild-AdS black holes and discuss our
results.Comment: 21 pages, published versio
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