Light rings as observational evidence for event horizons: long-lived modes, ergoregions and nonlinear instabilities of ultracompact objects

Ultracompact objects are self-gravitating systems with a light ring. It was recently suggested that fluctuations in the background of these objects are extremely long-lived and might turn unstable at the nonlinear level, if the object is not endowed with a horizon. If correct, this result has important consequences: objects with a light ring are black holes. In other words, the nonlinear instability of ultracompact stars would provide a strong argument in favor of the "black hole hypothesis," once electromagnetic or gravitational-wave observations confirm the existence of light rings. Here we explore in some depth the mode structure of ultracompact stars, in particular constant-density stars and gravastars. We show that the existence of very long-lived modes -- localized near a second, stable null geodesic -- is a generic feature of gravitational perturbations of such configurations. Already at the linear level, such modes become unstable if the object rotates sufficiently fast to develop an ergoregion. Finally, we conjecture that the long-lived modes become unstable under fragmentation via a Dyson-Chandrasekhar-Fermi mechanism at the nonlinear level. Depending on the structure of the star, it is also possible that nonlinearities lead to the formation of small black holes close to the stable light ring. Our results suggest that the mere observation of a light ring is a strong evidence for the existence of black holes.Comment: 10 pages, RevTeX

Rolling to the tachyon vacuum in string field theory

We argue that the rolling-tachyon solution in cubic OSFT proceeds at late times to precisely the analytic tachyon-vacuum solution constructed by Schnabl. In addition, we demonstrate the relationship between the rolling-tachyon solution and the standard BCFT description by showing that there is a finite gauge transformation which relates the two.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, References and comments adde

Tachyon Vacuum Solution in Open String Field Theory with Constant B Field

We show that Schnabl's tachyon vacuum solution is an exact solution of the equation of motion of Witten's open bosonic string field theory in the background of constant antisymmetric two-form field. The action computed at the vacuum solution is given by the Dirac-Born-Infeld factor multiplied to that without the antisymmetric tensor field.Comment: 8 page

Disk Partition Function and Oscillatory Rolling Tachyons

An exact cubic open string field theory rolling tachyon solution was recently found by Kiermaier et. al. and Schnabl. This oscillatory solution has been argued to be related by a field redefinition to the simple exponential rolling tachyon deformation of boundary conformal theory. In the latter approach, the disk partition function takes a simple form. Out of curiosity, we compute the disk partition function for an oscillatory tachyon profile, and find that the result is nevertheless almost the same.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. v4: discussion clarified, appendix added, conclusions unchanged; version to appear in J.Phys.

Exact marginality in open string field theory: a general framework

We construct analytic solutions of open bosonic string field theory for any exactly marginal deformation in any boundary conformal field theory when properly renormalized operator products of the marginal operator are given. We explicitly provide such renormalized operator products for a class of marginal deformations which include the deformations of flat D-branes in flat backgrounds by constant massless modes of the gauge field and of the scalar fields on the D-branes, the cosine potential for a space-like coordinate, and the hyperbolic cosine potential for the time-like coordinate. In our construction we use integrated vertex operators, which are closely related to finite deformations in boundary conformal field theory, while previous analytic solutions were based on unintegrated vertex operators. We also introduce a modified star product to formulate string field theory around the deformed background.Comment: 63 pages, 10 figures, LaTeX2

Two-Fermi-surface superconducting state and a nodal d-wave gap in the electron-doped Sm(1.85)Ce(0.15)CuO(4-d) cuprate superconductor

We report on laser-excited angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) in the electron-doped cuprate Sm(1.85)Ce(0.15)CuO(4-d). The data show the existence of a nodal hole-pocket Fermi-surface both in the normal and superconducting states. We prove that its origin is long-range antiferromagnetism by an analysis of the coherence factors in the main and folded bands. This coexistence of long-range antiferromagnetism and superconductivity implies that electron-doped cuprates are two-Fermi-surface superconductors. The measured superconducting gap in the nodal hole-pocket is compatible with a d-wave symmetry.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev. Let