On the oscillation of species

We describe a new class of BPS objects called magnetubes: their supersymmetry is determined by their magnetic charges, while their electric charges can oscillate freely between different species. We show how to incorporate these objects into microstate geometries and create BPS solutions in which the charge densities rotate through different U(1) species as one moves around a circle within the microstate geometry. Our solutions have the same “time-like” supersymmetry as five-dimensional, three-charge black holes but, in various parts of the solution, the supersymmetry takes the “null” form that is normally associated with magnetic charges. It is this property that enables the species oscillation of magnetubes to be compatible with supersymmetry. We give an example in which the species oscillate non-trivially around a circle within a microstate geometry, and yet the energy-momentum tensor and metric are completely independent of this circle: only the amplitude of the oscillation influences the metric

Flavour Democracy in Strong Unification

We show that the fermion mass spectrum may naturally be understood in terms of flavour democratic fixed points in supersymmetric theories which have a large domain of attraction in the presence of "strong unification". Our approach provides an alternative to the approximate Yukawa texture zeroes of the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism. We discuss a particular model based on a broken gauged $SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R$ family symmetry which illustrates our approach.Comment: 21 Pages plain latex; includes 5 eps figure

Nonsupersymmetric smooth geometries and D1-D5-P bound states

We construct smooth nonsupersymmetric soliton solutions with D1-brane, D5-brane, and momentum charges in type IIB supergravity compactified on T4×S1, with the charges along the compact directions. This generalizes previous studies of smooth supersymmetric solutions. The solutions are obtained by considering a known family of U(1)×U(1) invariant metrics, and studying the conditions imposed by requiring smoothness. We discuss the relation of our solutions to states in the CFT describing the D1-D5 system and describe various interesting features of the geometry

Hot multiboundary wormholes from bipartite entanglement

We analyze the 1+1 CFT states dual to hot (time-symmetric) 2+1 multiboundary AdS wormholes. These are black hole geometries with high local temperature, $n\geqslant 1$ asymptotically-AdS3 regions, and arbitrary internal topology. The dual state at t = 0 is defined on n circles. We show these to be well-described by sewing together tensor networks corresponding to thermofield double states. As a result, the entanglement is spatially localized and bipartite: away from particular boundary points ('vertices') any small connected region A of the boundary CFT is entangled only with another small connected region B, where B may lie on a different circle or may be a different part of the same circle. We focus on the pair-of-pants case, from which more general cases may be constructed. We also discuss finite-temperature corrections, where we note that the states involve a code subspace in each circle

Strings in extremal BTZ black holes

We study the spectrum of the worldsheet theory of the bosonic closed string in the massless and extremal rotating BTZ black holes. We use a hyperbolic Wakimoto representation of the SL(2,R) currents to construct vertex operators for the string modes on these backgrounds. We argue that there are tachyons in the twisted sector, but these are not localised near the horizon. We study the relation to the null orbifold in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant. We also discuss the problem of extending this analysis to the supersymmetric case.Comment: 20 pages, no figure

Bubbles Unbound: Bubbles of Nothing Without Kaluza-Klein

I present analytic time symmetric initial data for five dimensions describing ``bubbles of nothing'' which are asymptotically flat in the higher dimensional sense, i.e. there is no Kaluza-Klein circle asymptotically. The mass and size of these bubbles may be chosen arbitrarily and in particular the solutions contain bubbles of any size which are arbitrarily light. This suggests the solutions may be important phenomenologically and in particular I show that at low energy there are bubbles which expand outwards, suggesting a new possible instability in higher dimensions. Further, one may find bubbles of any size where the only region of high curvature is confined to an arbitrarily small volume.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures, v2: minor changes, published versio

On Witten's Instability and Winding Tachyons

We investigate, from a spacetime perspective, some aspects of Horowitz's recent conjecture that black strings may catalyze the decay of Kaluza-Klein spacetimes into a bubble of nothing. We identify classical configurations that interpolate between flat space and the bubble, and discuss the energetics of the transition. We investigate the effects of winding tachyons on the size and shape of the barrier and find no evidence at large compactification radius that tachyons enhance the tunneling rate. For the interesting radii, of order the string scale, the question is difficult to answer due to the failure of the $\alpha^\prime$ expansion.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, Late

Tachyon Condensation and Black Strings

We show that under certain conditions, closed string tachyon condensation produces a topology changing transition from black strings to Kaluza-Klein "bubbles of nothing." This can occur when the curvature at the horizon is much smaller than the string scale, so the black string is far from the correspondence point when it would make a transition to an excited fundamental string. This provides a dramatic new endpoint to Hawking evaporation. A similar transition occurs for black p-branes, and can be viewed as a nonextremal version of a geometric transition. Applications to AdS black holes and the AdS soliton are also discussed.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, v2: references adde

Solitons in Five Dimensional Minimal Supergravity: Local Charge, Exotic Ergoregions, and Violations of the BPS Bound

We describe a number of striking features of a class of smooth solitons in gauged and ungauged minimal supergravity in five dimensions. The solitons are globally asymptotically flat or asymptotically AdS without any Kaluza-Klein directions but contain a minimal sphere formed when a cycle pinches off in the interior of the spacetime. The solutions carry a local magnetic charge and many have rather unusual ergosurfaces. Perhaps most strikingly, many of the solitons have more electric charge or, in the asymptotically AdS case, more electric charge and angular momentum than is allowed by the usual BPS bound. We comment on, but do not resolve, the new puzzle this raises for AdS/CFT.Comment: 60 pages, 12 figures, 3 table