The portrait of eikonal instability in Lovelock theories

Perturbations and eikonal instabilities of black holes and branes in the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory and its Lovelock generalization were considered in the literature for several particular cases, where the asymptotic conditions (flat, dS, AdS), the number of spacetime dimensions $D$, non-vanishing coupling constants ($\alpha_1$, $\alpha_2$, $\alpha_3$ etc.) and other parameters have been chosen in a specific way. Here we give a comprehensive analysis of the eikonal instabilities of black holes and branes for the \emph{most general} Lovelock theory, not limited by any of the above cases. Although the part of the stability analysis is performed here purely analytically and formulated in terms of the inequalities for the black hole parameters, the most general case is treated numerically and the accurate regions of instabilities are presented. The shared Mathematica(R) code allows the reader to construct the regions of eikonal instability for any desired values of the parameters.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, supplementary Mathematica(R) noteboo

Quasinormal modes of black holes: from astrophysics to string theory

Perturbations of black holes, initially considered in the context of possible observations of astrophysical effects, have been studied for the past ten years in string theory, brane-world models and quantum gravity. Through the famous gauge/gravity duality, proper oscillations of perturbed black holes, called quasinormal modes (QNMs), allow for the description of the hydrodynamic regime in the dual finite temperature field theory at strong coupling, which can be used to predict the behavior of quark-gluon plasmas in the nonperturbative regime. On the other hand, the brane-world scenarios assume the existence of extra dimensions in nature, so that multidimensional black holes can be formed in a laboratory experiment. All this stimulated active research in the field of perturbations of higher-dimensional black holes and branes during recent years. In this review recent achievements on various aspects of black hole perturbations are discussed such as decoupling of variables in the perturbation equations, quasinormal modes (with special emphasis on various numerical and analytical methods of calculations), late-time tails, gravitational stability, AdS/CFT interpretation of quasinormal modes, and holographic superconductors. We also touch on state-of-the-art observational possibilities for detecting quasinormal modes of black holes.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures, to be published in Reviews of Modern Physics. The style and reference list are slightly different from the journal versio

Quasinormal modes of Gauss-Bonnet-AdS black holes: towards holographic description of finite coupling

Here we shall show that there is no other instability for the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet-anti-de Sitter (AdS) black holes, than the eikonal one and consider the features of the quasinormal spectrum in the stability sector in detail. The obtained quasinormal spectrum consists from the two essentially different types of modes: perturbative and non-perturbative in the Gauss-Bonnet coupling $\alpha$. The sound and hydrodynamic modes of the perturbative branch can be expressed through their Schwazrschild-AdS limits by adding a linear in $\alpha$ correction to the damping rates: $\omega \approx Re(\omega_{SAdS}) - Im(\omega_{SAdS}) (1 - \alpha \cdot ((D+1) (D-4) /2 R^2)) i$, where $R$ is the AdS radius. The non-perturbative branch of modes consists of purely imaginary modes, whose damping rates unboundedly increase when $\alpha$ goes to zero. When the black hole radius is much larger than the anti-de Sitter radius $R$, the regime of the black hole with planar horizon (black brane) is reproduced. If the Gauss-Bonnet coupling $\alpha$ (or used in holography $\lambda_{GB}$) is not small enough, then the black holes and branes suffer from the instability, so that the holographic interpretation of perturbation of such black holes becomes questionable, as, for example, the claimed viscosity bound violation in the higher derivative gravity. For example, $D=5$ black brane is unstable at $|\lambda_{GB}|>1/8$ and has anomalously large relaxation time when approaching the threshold of instability.Comment: 22 pages, JHEP styl

Long life of Gauss-Bonnet corrected black holes

Dictated by the string theory and various higher dimensional scenarios, black holes in $D>4$-dimensional space-times must have higher curvature corrections. The first and dominant term is quadratic in curvature, and called the Gauss-Bonnet (GB) term. We shall show that although the Gauss-Bonnet correction changes black hole's geometry only softly, the emission of gravitons is suppressed by many orders even at quite small values of the GB coupling. The huge suppression of the graviton emission is due to the multiplication of the two effects: the quick cooling of the black hole when one turns on the GB coupling and the exponential decreasing of the grey-body factor of the tensor type of gravitons at small and moderate energies. At higher $D$ the tensor gravitons emission is dominant, so that the overall lifetime of black holes with Gauss-Bonnet corrections is many orders larger than was expected. This effect should be relevant for the future experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Keywords: Hawking radiation, black hole evaporation.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure

Stability of higher dimensional Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de Sitter black holes

We investigate stability of the D-dimensional Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de-Sitter metrics as solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell equations. We have shown that asymptotically anti-de Sitter black holes are dynamically stable for all values of charge and anti-de Sitter radius in $D=5,6...11$ dimensional space-times. This does not contradict to dynamical instability of RN-AdS black holes found by Gubser in $\mathcal{N}=8$ gauged supergravity, because the latter instability comes from the tachyon mode of the scalar field, coupled to the system. Asymptotically AdS black holes are known to be thermodynamically unstable for some region of parameters, yet, as we have shown here, they are stable against gravitational perturbations.Comment: 9 pages, 2 tables, a lot of figures, RevTe