Multidimensional Geometrical Model of the Renormalized Electrical Charge with Splitting off the Extra Coordinates

A geometrical model of electric charge is proposed. This model has ``naked'' charge screened with a ``fur - coat'' consisting of virtual wormholes. The 5D wormhole solution in the Kaluza - Klein theory is the ``naked'' charge. The splitting off of the 5D dimension happens on the two spheres (null surfaces) bounding this 5D wormhole. This allows one to sew two Reissner - Nordstr\"om black holes onto it on both sides. The virtual wormholes entrap a part of the electrical flux lines coming into the ``naked'' charge. This effect essentially changes the charge visible at infinity so that it satisfies the real relation $m^2<e^2$.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, awarded Honorable Mention by Grav.Res.Found., 199

On Subleading Contributions to the AdS/CFT Trace Anomaly

In the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, we perform a direct computation in AdS_5 supergravity of the trace anomaly of a d=4, N=2 SCFT. We find agreement with the field theory result up to next to leading order in the 1/N expansion. In particular, the order N gravitational contribution to the anomaly is obtained from a Riemann tensor squared term in the 7-brane effective action deduced from heterotic - type I duality. We also discuss, in the AdS/CFT context, the order N corrections to the trace anomaly in d=4, N=4 SCFTs involving SO or Sp gauge groups.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX, v2: references adde

Fermi Coordinates and Penrose Limits

We propose a formulation of the Penrose plane wave limit in terms of null Fermi coordinates. This provides a physically intuitive (Fermi coordinates are direct measures of geodesic distance in space-time) and manifestly covariant description of the expansion around the plane wave metric in terms of components of the curvature tensor of the original metric, and generalises the covariant description of the lowest order Penrose limit metric itself, obtained in hep-th/0312029. We describe in some detail the construction of null Fermi coordinates and the corresponding expansion of the metric, and then study various aspects of the higher order corrections to the Penrose limit. In particular, we observe that in general the first-order corrected metric is such that it admits a light-cone gauge description in string theory. We also establish a formal analogue of the Weyl tensor peeling theorem for the Penrose limit expansion in any dimension, and we give a simple derivation of the leading (quadratic) corrections to the Penrose limit of AdS_5 x S^5.Comment: 25 page

N=(4,4) Type IIA String Theory on PP-Wave Background

We construct IIA GS superstring action on the ten-dimensional pp-wave background, which arises as the compactification of eleven-dimensional pp-wave geometry along the isometry direction. The background geometry has 24 Killing spinors and among them, 16 components correspond to the non-linearly realized kinematical supersymmetry in the string action. The remaining eight components are linearly realized and shown to be independent of x^+ coordinate, which is identified with the world-sheet time coordinate of the string action in the light-cone gauge. The resultant dynamical N=(4,4) supersymmetry is investigated, which is shown to be consistent with the field contents of the action containing two free massive supermultiplets.Comment: latex, 15 pages; v2: typos corrected, polished, references adde

Scalar Field Probes of Power-Law Space-Time Singularities

We analyse the effective potential of the scalar wave equation near generic space-time singularities of power-law type (Szekeres-Iyer metrics) and show that the effective potential exhibits a universal and scale invariant leading x^{-2} inverse square behaviour in the ``tortoise coordinate'' x provided that the metrics satisfy the strict Dominant Energy Condition (DEC). This result parallels that obtained in hep-th/0403252 for probes consisting of families of massless particles (null geodesic deviation, a.k.a. the Penrose Limit). The detailed properties of the scalar wave operator depend sensitively on the numerical coefficient of the x^{-2}-term, and as one application we show that timelike singularities satisfying the DEC are quantum mechanically singular in the sense of the Horowitz-Marolf (essential self-adjointness) criterion. We also comment on some related issues like the near-singularity behaviour of the scalar fields permitted by the Friedrichs extension.Comment: v2: 21 pages, JHEP3.cls, one reference adde

Penrose Limits and Spacetime Singularities

We give a covariant characterisation of the Penrose plane wave limit: the plane wave profile matrix $A(u)$ is the restriction of the null geodesic deviation matrix (curvature tensor) of the original spacetime metric to the null geodesic, evaluated in a comoving frame. We also consider the Penrose limits of spacetime singularities and show that for a large class of black hole, cosmological and null singularities (of Szekeres-Iyer ``power-law type''), including those of the FRW and Schwarzschild metrics, the result is a singular homogeneous plane wave with profile $A(u)\sim u^{-2}$, the scale invariance of the latter reflecting the power-law behaviour of the singularities.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX2e; v2: additional references and cosmetic correction

Dissipative Hydrodynamics and Heavy Ion Collisions

Recent discussions of RHIC data emphasized the exciting possibility that the matter produced in nucleus-nucleus collisions shows properties of a near-perfect fluid. Here, we aim at delineating the applicability of fluid dynamics, which is needed to quantify the size of corresponding dissipative effects. We start from the equations for dissipative fluid dynamics, which we derive from kinetic theory up to second order (Israel-Stewart theory) in a systematic gradient expansion. In model studies, we then establish that for too early initialization of the hydrodynamic evolution (\tau_0 \lsim 1 fm/c) or for too high transverse momentum (p_T \gsim 1 GeV) in the final state, the expected dissipative corrections are too large for a fluid description to be reliable. Moreover, viscosity-induced modifications of hadronic transverse momentum spectra can be accommodated to a significant degree in an ideal fluid description by modifications of the decoupling stage. We argue that these conclusions, drawn from model studies, can also be expected to arise in significantly more complex, realistic fluid dynamics simulations of heavy ion collisions.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, uses revtex4; v2: references added, typos correcte

M-theory on a Time-dependent Plane-wave

We propose a matrix model on a homogeneous plane-wave background with 20 supersymmetries. This background is anti-Mach type and is equivalent to the time-dependent background. We study supersymmetries in this theory and calculate the superalgebra. The vacuum energy of the abelian part is also calculated. In addition we find classical solutions such as graviton solution, fuzzy sphere and hyperboloid.Comment: 19pages, no figures, LaTeX, JHEP3.cl

Goedel, Penrose, anti-Mach: extra supersymmetries of time-dependent plane waves

We prove that M-theory plane waves with extra supersymmetries are necessarily homogeneous (but possibly time-dependent), and we show by explicit construction that such time-dependent plane waves can admit extra supersymmetries. To that end we study the Penrose limits of Goedel-like metrics, show that the Penrose limit of the M-theory Goedel metric (with 20 supercharges) is generically a time-dependent homogeneous plane wave of the anti-Mach type, and display the four extra Killings spinors in that case. We conclude with some general remarks on the Killing spinor equations for homogeneous plane waves.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX2