Higher Dimensional Gravity, Propagating Torsion and AdS Gauge Invariance

The most general theory of gravity in d-dimensions which leads to second order field equations for the metric has [(d-1)/2] free parameters. It is shown that requiring the theory to have the maximum possible number of degrees of freedom, fixes these parameters in terms of the gravitational and the cosmological constants. In odd dimensions, the Lagrangian is a Chern-Simons form for the (A)dS or Poincare groups. In even dimensions, the action has a Born-Infeld-like form. Torsion may occur explicitly in the Lagrangian in the parity-odd sector and the torsional pieces respect local (A)dS symmetry for d=4k-1 only. These torsional Lagrangians are related to the Chern-Pontryagin characters for the (A)dS group. The additional coefficients in front of these new terms in the Lagrangian are shown to be quantized.Comment: 10 pages, two columns, no figures, title changed in journal, final version to appear in Class. Quant. Gra

TASP: Towards anonymity sets that persist

Anonymous communication systems are vulnerable to long term passive "intersection attacks". Not all users of an anonymous communication system will be online at the same time, this leaks some information about who is talking to who. A global passive adversary observing all communications can learn the set of potential recipients of a message with more and more confidence over time. Nearly all deployed anonymous communication tools offer no protection against such attacks. In this work, we introduce TASP, a protocol used by an anonymous communication system that mitigates intersection attacks by intelligently grouping clients together into anonymity sets. We find that with a bandwidth overhead of just 8% we can dramatically extend the time necessary to perform a successful intersection attack

Black Hole Scan

Gravitation theories selected by requiring that they have a unique anti-de Sitter vacuum with a fixed cosmological constant are studied. For a given dimension d, the Lagrangians under consideration are labeled by an integer k=1,2,...,[(d-1)/2]. Black holes for each d and k are found and are used to rank these theories. A minimum possible size for a localized electrically charged source is predicted in the whole set of theories, except General Relativity. It is found that the thermodynamic behavior falls into two classes: If d-2k=1, these solutions resemble the three dimensional black hole, otherwise, their behavior is similar to the Schwarzschild-AdS_4 geometry.Comment: Two columns, revtex, 15 pages, 5 figures, minor typos corrected, final version for Journa

Kerr-Schild ansatz in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity: An exact vacuum solution in five dimensions

As is well-known, Kerr-Schild metrics linearize the Einstein tensor. We shall see here that they also simplify the Gauss-Bonnet tensor, which turns out to be only quadratic in the arbitrary Kerr-Schild function f when the seed metric is maximally symmetric. This property allows us to give a simple analytical expression for its trace, when the seed metric is a five dimensional maximally symmetric spacetime in spheroidal coordinates with arbitrary parameters a and b. We also write in a (fairly) simple form the full Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet tensor (with a cosmological term) when the seed metric is flat and the oblateness parameters are equal, a=b. Armed with these results we give in a compact form the solution of the trace of the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet field equations with a cosmological term and a different than b. We then examine whether this solution for the trace does solve the remaining field equations. We find that it does not in general, unless the Gauss-Bonnet coupling is such that the field equations have a unique maximally symmetric solution.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, references added. Last version for CQ

Dissecting Tor Bridges: a Security Evaluation of Their Private and Public Infrastructures

Bridges are onion routers in the Tor Network whose IP addresses are not public. So far, no global security analysis of Tor bridges has been performed. Leveraging public data sources, and two known Tor issues, we perform the first systematic study on the security of the Tor bridges infrastructure. Our study covers both the public infrastructure available to all Tor users, and the previously unreported private infrastructure, comprising private nodes for the exclusive use of those who know their existence. Our analysis of the public infrastructure is twofold. First, we examine the security implications of the public data in the CollecTor service, identifying several pieces of data that may be detrimental for the security of bridges. Then, we measure security relevant properties of public bridges. Our results show that the 55% of public bridges that carry clients are vulnerable to aggressive blocking; that 90% of bridge clients use default bridges that are trivial to identify; that the concurrent deployment of Pluggable Transports in bridges reduces the security of the most secure transports; and that running non-Tor services in the same host as a bridge may harm its anonymity. To study the private infrastructure, we use an approach to discover 694 private bridges on the Internet and a novel technique to track bridges across IP changes. We are first to measure the size of the private bridge population (35% discovered bridges are private) and to report existence of infrastructures that use private proxies to forward traffic to backend bridges or relays. We use a novel clustering approach to analyze the different infrastructures using proxies and bridges, examining its hosting and security properties. We provide an extensive discussion on the security implications of our findings

Black holes with topologically nontrivial AdS asymptotics

Asymptotically locally AdS black hole geometries of dimension d > 2 are studied for nontrivial topologies of the transverse section. These geometries are static solutions of a set of theories labeled by an integer 0 < k < [(d-1)/2] which possess a unique globally AdS vacuum. The transverse sections of these solutions are d-2 surfaces of constant curvature, allowing for different topological configurations. The thermodynamic analysis of these solutions reveals that the presence of a negative cosmological constant is essential to ensure the existence of stable equilibrium states. In addition, it is shown that these theories are holographically related to [(d-1)/2] different conformal field theories at the boundary.Comment: 13 Pages, 3 figures, two columns, Revtex, last version for PR

Higher dimensional gravity invariant under the Poincare group

It is shown that the Stelle-West Grignani-Nardelli-formalism allows, both when odd dimensions and when even dimensions are considered, constructing actions for higher dimensional gravity invariant under local Lorentz rotations and under local Poincar\`{e} translations. It is also proved that such actions have the same coefficients as those obtained by Troncoso and Zanelli in ref. Class. Quantum Grav. 17 (2000) 4451.Comment: 7 pages, Latex, accepted in Phys. Rev.

de Sitter black hole with a conformally coupled scalar field in four dimensions

A four-dimensional black hole solution of the Einstein equations with a positive cosmological constant, coupled to a conformal scalar field, is given. There is a curvature singularity at the origin, and scalar field diverges inside the event horizon. The electrically charged solution, which has a fixed charge-to-mass ratio is also found. The quartic self-interacting coupling becomes bounded in terms of Newton's and the cosmological constants.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, CECS style, energy conditions are discussed and some references were added. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Thermodynamics of Black Holes in Schroedinger Space

A black hole and a black hyperboloid solutions in the space with the Schroedinger isometries are presented and their thermodynamics is examined. The on-shell action is obtained by the difference between the extremal and non-extremal ones with the unusual matching of the boundary metrics. This regularization method is first applied to the black brane solution in the space of the Schroedinger symmetry and shown to correctly reproduce the known thermodynamics. The actions of the black solutions all turn out to be the same as the AdS counterparts. The phase diagram of the black hole system is obtained in the parameter space of the temperature and chemical potential and the diagram contains the Hawking-Page phase transition and instability lines.Comment: 20 page