Comments on Black Holes in String Theory

A very brief review is given of some of the developments leading to our current understanding of black holes in string theory. This is followed by a discussion of two possible misconceptions in this subject - one involving the stability of small black holes and the other involving scale radius duality. Finally, I describe some recent results concerning quasinormal modes of black holes in anti de Sitter spacetime, and their implications for strongly coupled conformal field theories (in various dimensions).Comment: 13 pages. Talk given at Strings '99, Potsdam, German

Black Strings and Classical Hair

We examine the geometry near the event horizon of a family of black string solutions with traveling waves. It has previously been shown that the metric is continuous there. Contrary to expectations, we find that the geometry is not smooth, and the horizon becomes singular whenever a wave is present. Both five dimensional and six dimensional black strings are considered with similar results.Comment: 14 pages, harvma

Where is the Information Stored in Black Holes?

It is shown that many modes of the gravitational field exist only inside the horizon of an extreme black hole in string theory. At least in certain cases, the number of such modes is sufficient to account for the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. These modes are associated with sources which carry Ramond-Ramond charge, and so may be viewed as the strong coupling limit of D-branes. Although these sources naturally live at the singularity, they are well defined and generate modes which extend out to the horizon. This suggests that the information in an extreme black hole is not localized near the singularity or the horizon, but extends between them.Comment: 21 pages, reference corrected and comment adde

Black Holes with Multiple Charges and the Correspondence Principle

We consider the entropy of near extremal black holes with multiple charges in the context of the recently proposed correspondence principle of Horowitz and Polchinski, including black holes with two, three and four Ramond-Ramond charges. We find that at the matching point the black hole entropy can be accounted for by massless open strings ending on the D-branes for all cases except a black hole with four Ramond-Ramond charges, in which case a possible resolution in terms of brane-antibrane excitations is considered.Comment: 26 pages, harvmac, minor correction

Focusing versus defocusing properties of truly naked black holes

We study the properties of the congruence of null geodesics propagating near the so-called truly naked horizons (TNH) - objects having finite Kretschmann scalar but with diverging tidal acceleration for freely falling observers. The expansion of outgoing rays near the future horizon always tends to vanish for the non-extremal case but may be non-zero for the distorted (ultra)extremal one. It tends to diverge for the ingoing ones if the the null energy condition (NEC) is satisfied in the vicinity of the horizon outside. However, it also tends to zero for NEC violating cases except the remote horizons. We also discuss the validity of test particle approximation for TNHs and find the sufficient condition for backreaction remaining small.Comment: 16 pages. To appear in IJMP

Black holes with non-minimal derivative coupling

We study the gravitational field equations in the presence of a coupling between the derivative of a massless scalar field and the Einstein tensor. This configuration is motivated by Galileon gravity as it preserves shift invariance in the scalar sector. We analytically obtain solutions with static and spherically symmetric geometry, which also include black holes with a single regular horizon. We examine the thermodynamical properties of these solutions, and we reveal the non-perturbative nature of the Galileon coupling constant. We also find a phase transition, similar to the one described by Hawking and Page, which occurs at a critical temperature determined by both the black hole mass and by the strength of the coupling.Comment: Matches the published versio

Atmospheric densities from Explorer 17 density gauges and a comparison with satellite drag data

Atmospheric density data from Explorer XVII GAUGES and satellite drag dat

Cosmological string models from Milne spaces and SL(2,Z) orbifold

The $n+1$-dimensional Milne Universe with extra free directions is used to construct simple FRW cosmological string models in four dimensions, describing expansion in the presence of matter with $p=k \rho$, $k=(4-n)/3n$. We then consider the n=2 case and make SL(2,Z) orbifold identifications. The model is surprisingly related to the null orbifold with an extra reflection generator. The study of the string spectrum involves the theory of harmonic functions in the fundamental domain of SL(2,Z). In particular, from this theory one can deduce a bound for the energy gap and the fact that there are an infinite number of excitations with a finite degeneracy. We discuss the structure of wave functions and give examples of physical winding states becoming light near the singularity.Comment: 14 pages, harvma