850 research outputs found
On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton
Starting from first principles and general assumptions Newton's law of
gravitation is shown to arise naturally and unavoidably in a theory in which
space is emergent through a holographic scenario. Gravity is explained as an
entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the
positions of material bodies. A relativistic generalization of the presented
arguments directly leads to the Einstein equations. When space is emergent even
Newton's law of inertia needs to be explained. The equivalence principle leads
us to conclude that it is actually this law of inertia whose origin is
entropic.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure
The hidden horizon and black hole unitarity
We motivate through a detailed analysis of the Hawking radiation in a
Schwarzschild background a scheme in accordance with quantum unitarity. In this
scheme the semi-classical approximation of the unitary quantum - horizonless -
black hole S-matrix leads to the conventional description of the Hawking
radiation from a classical black hole endowed with an event horizon. Unitarity
is borne out by the detailed exclusive S-matrix amplitudes. There, the fixing
of generic out-states, in addition to the in-state, yields in asymptotic
Minkowski space-time saddle-point contributions which are dominated by
Planckian metric fluctuations when approaching the Schwarzschild radius. We
argue that these prevent the corresponding macroscopic "exclusive backgrounds"
to develop an event horizon. However, if no out-state is selected, a distinct
saddle-point geometry can be defined, in which Planckian fluctuations are
tamed. Such "inclusive background" presents an event horizon and constitutes a
coarse-grained average over the aforementioned exclusive ones. The classical
event horizon appears as a coarse-grained structure, sustaining the
thermodynamic significance of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. This is
reminiscent of the tentative fuzzball description of extremal black holes: the
role of microstates is played here by a complete set of out-states. Although
the computations of unitary amplitudes would require a detailed theory of
quantum gravity, the proposed scheme itself, which appeals to the metric
description of gravity only in the vicinity of stationary points, does not.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures. Typos corrected. Two footnotes added (footnotes
3 and 5
The holographic principle
There is strong evidence that the area of any surface limits the information
content of adjacent spacetime regions, at 10^(69) bits per square meter. We
review the developments that have led to the recognition of this entropy bound,
placing special emphasis on the quantum properties of black holes. The
construction of light-sheets, which associate relevant spacetime regions to any
given surface, is discussed in detail. We explain how the bound is tested and
demonstrate its validity in a wide range of examples.
A universal relation between geometry and information is thus uncovered. It
has yet to be explained. The holographic principle asserts that its origin must
lie in the number of fundamental degrees of freedom involved in a unified
description of spacetime and matter. It must be manifest in an underlying
quantum theory of gravity. We survey some successes and challenges in
implementing the holographic principle.Comment: 52 pages, 10 figures, invited review for Rev. Mod. Phys; v2:
reference adde
Generalized Painleve-Gullstrand descriptions of Kerr-Newman black holes
Generalized Painleve-Gullstrand metrics are explicitly constructed for the
Kerr-Newman family of charged rotating black holes. These descriptions are free
of all coordinate singularities; moreover, unlike the Doran and other proposed
metrics, an extra tunable function is introduced to ensure all variables in the
metrics remain real for all values of the mass M, charge Q, angular momentum
aM, and cosmological constant \Lambda > - 3/(a^2). To describe fermions in
Kerr-Newman spacetimes, the stronger requirement of non-singular vierbein
one-forms at the horizon(s) is imposed and coordinate singularities are
eliminated by local Lorentz boosts. Other known vierbein fields of Kerr-Newman
black holes are analysed and discussed; and it is revealed that some of these
descriptions are actually not related by physical Lorentz transformations to
the original Kerr-Newman expression in Boyer-Lindquist coordinates - which is
the reason complex components appear (for certain ranges of the radial
coordinate) in these metrics. As an application of our constructions the
correct effective Hawking temperature for Kerr black holes is derived with the
method of Parikh and Wilczek.Comment: 5 pages; extended to include application to derivation of Hawking
radiation for Kerr black holes with Parikh-Wilczek metho
Conformally rescaled spacetimes and Hawking radiation
We study various derivations of Hawking radiation in conformally rescaled
metrics. We focus on two important properties, the location of the horizon
under a conformal transformation and its associated temperature. We find that
the production of Hawking radiation cannot be associated in all cases to the
trapping horizon because its location is not invariant under a conformal
transformation. We also find evidence that the temperature of the Hawking
radiation should transform simply under a conformal transformation, being
invariant for asymptotic observers in the limit that the conformal
transformation factor is unity at their location.Comment: 22 pages, version submitted to journa
Lovelock gravity from entropic force
In this paper, we first generalize the formulation of entropic gravity to
(n+1)-dimensional spacetime. Then, we propose an entropic origin for
Gauss-Bonnet gravity and more general Lovelock gravity in arbitrary dimensions.
As a result, we are able to derive Newton's law of gravitation as well as the
corresponding Friedmann equations in these gravity theories. This procedure
naturally leads to a derivation of the higher dimensional gravitational
coupling constant of Friedmann/Einstein equation which is in complete agreement
with the results obtained by comparing the weak field limit of Einstein
equation with Poisson equation in higher dimensions. Our study shows that the
approach presented here is powerful enough to derive the gravitational field
equations in any gravity theory. PACS: 04.20.Cv, 04.50.-h, 04.70.Dy.Comment: 10 pages, new versio
Wilsonian Approach to Fluid/Gravity Duality
The problem of gravitational fluctuations confined inside a finite cutoff at
radius outside the horizon in a general class of black hole geometries
is considered. Consistent boundary conditions at both the cutoff surface and
the horizon are found and the resulting modes analyzed. For general cutoff
the dispersion relation is shown at long wavelengths to be that of a
linearized Navier-Stokes fluid living on the cutoff surface. A cutoff-dependent
line-integral formula for the diffusion constant is derived. The
dependence on is interpreted as renormalization group (RG) flow in the
fluid. Taking the cutoff to infinity in an asymptotically AdS context, the
formula for reproduces as a special case well-known results derived
using AdS/CFT. Taking the cutoff to the horizon, the effective speed of sound
goes to infinity, the fluid becomes incompressible and the Navier-Stokes
dispersion relation becomes exact. The resulting universal formula for the
diffusion constant reproduces old results from the membrane
paradigm. Hence the old membrane paradigm results and new AdS/CFT results are
related by RG flow. RG flow-invariance of the viscosity to entropy ratio is shown to follow from the first law of thermodynamics together with
isentropy of radial evolution in classical gravity. The ratio is expected to
run when quantum gravitational corrections are included.Comment: 34 pages, harvmac, clarified boundary conditio
Quantum Gravity in Everyday Life: General Relativity as an Effective Field Theory
This article is meant as a summary and introduction to the ideas of effective
field theory as applied to gravitational systems.
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Effective Field Theories
3. Low-Energy Quantum Gravity
4. Explicit Quantum Calculations
5. ConclusionsComment: 56 pages, 2 figures, JHEP style, Invited review to appear in Living
Reviews of Relativit
Isolated and dynamical horizons and their applications
Over the past three decades, black holes have played an important role in
quantum gravity, mathematical physics, numerical relativity and gravitational
wave phenomenology. However, conceptual settings and mathematical models used
to discuss them have varied considerably from one area to another. Over the
last five years a new, quasi-local framework was introduced to analyze diverse
facets of black holes in a unified manner. In this framework, evolving black
holes are modeled by dynamical horizons and black holes in equilibrium by
isolated horizons. We review basic properties of these horizons and summarize
applications to mathematical physics, numerical relativity and quantum gravity.
This paradigm has led to significant generalizations of several results in
black hole physics. Specifically, it has introduced a more physical setting for
black hole thermodynamics and for black hole entropy calculations in quantum
gravity; suggested a phenomenological model for hairy black holes; provided
novel techniques to extract physics from numerical simulations; and led to new
laws governing the dynamics of black holes in exact general relativity.Comment: 77 pages, 12 figures. Typos and references correcte
The Weak Gravity Conjecture and the Viscosity Bound with Six-Derivative Corrections
The weak gravity conjecture and the shear viscosity to entropy density bound
place constraints on low energy effective field theories that may help to
distinguish which theories can be UV completed. Recently, there have been
suggestions of a possible correlation between the two constraints. In some
interesting cases, the behavior was precisely such that the conjectures were
mutually exclusive. Motivated by these works, we study the mass to charge and
shear viscosity to entropy density ratios for charged AdS5 black branes, which
are holographically dual to four-dimensional CFTs at finite temperature. We
study a family of four-derivative and six-derivative perturbative corrections
to these backgrounds. We identify the region in parameter space where the two
constraints are satisfied and in particular find that the inclusion of the
next-to-leading perturbative correction introduces wider possibilities for the
satisfaction of both constraints.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, v2: published version, refs added, minor
clarificatio
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