Poincare recurrences of Schwarzschild black holes

We discuss massive scalar perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole. We argue that quantum effects alter the effective potential near the horizon resulting in Poincare recurrences in Green functions. Results at the semi-classical level are independent of the details of the modification of the potential provided its minimum near the horizon is inversely proportional to the square of the Poincare time. This modification may be viewed as a change in the near-horizon geometry. We consider explicitly the examples of a brick wall, a smooth cutoff and a wormhole-like modification showing that they all lead to the same results at leading order.Comment: 15 page

Conductivity of Strongly Coupled Striped Superconductor

We study the conductivity of a strongly coupled striped superconductor using gauge/gravity duality (holography). The study is done analytically, in the large modulation regime. We show that the optical conductivity is inhomogeneous but isotropic at low temperatures. Near but below the critical temperature, we calculate the conductivity analytically at small frequency \omega, and find it to be both inhomogeneous and anisotropic. The anisotropy is imaginary and scales like 1/\omega. We also calculate analytically the speed of the second sound and the thermodynamic susceptibility.Comment: 32 page

Quantization of maximally-charged slowly-moving black holes

We discuss the quantization of a system of slowly-moving extreme Reissner-Nordstrom black holes. In the near-horizon limit, this system has been shown to possess an SL(2,R) conformal symmetry. However, the Hamiltonian appears to have no well-defined ground state. This problem can be circumvented by a redefinition of the Hamiltonian due to de Alfaro, Fubini and Furlan (DFF). We apply the Faddeev-Popov quantization procedure to show that the Hamiltonian with no ground state corresponds to a gauge in which there is an obstruction at the singularities of moduli space requiring a modification of the quantization rules. The redefinition of the Hamiltonian a la DFF corresponds to a different choice of gauge. The latter is a good gauge leading to standard quantization rules. Thus, the DFF trick is a consequence of a standard gauge-fixing procedure in the case of black hole scattering.Comment: Corrected errors in the gauge-fixing procedur

Radiative corrections in processes at the SSC

We discuss radiative corrections for interactions in the SSC environment. Based on the theory of Yennie, Frautschi and Suura, we develop appropriate Monte Carlo event generators to compute the background electromagnetic radiation. Our results indicate that multiple-photon effects must be taken into account in the study of SSC physics such as Higgs decay.Comment: UTHEP-92-0901, 15 pages (incl. 3 figures), LaTeX (Talk presented at the XXXII Cracow School of Theoretical Physics, Zakopane, June 1992

Conformal boundary and geodesics for AdS5×S5AdS_5\times S^5 and the plane wave: Their approach in the Penrose limit

Projecting on a suitable subset of coordinates, a picture is constructed in which the conformal boundary of $AdS_5\times S^5$ and that of the plane wave resulting in the Penrose limit are located at the same line. In a second line of arguments all $AdS_5\times S^5$ and plane wave geodesics are constructed in their integrated form. Performing the Penrose limit, the approach of null geodesics reaching the conformal boundary of $AdS_5\times S^5$ to that of the plane wave is studied in detail. At each point these null geodesics of $AdS_5\times S^5$ form a cone which degenerates in the limit.Comment: some statements refined, chapter 5 rewritten to make it more precise, some typos correcte