arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Aaron J. Amsel.
We present a simple "Wald-like" formula for gravitational energy about a constant curvature background spacetime. The formula is derived following the Abbott-Deser-Tekin approach for the definition of conserved asymptotic charges in higher-derivative gravity.
We investigate the non-perturbative stability of asymptotically anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to tachyonic scalar fields with mass near the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. Such scalars are characterized by power-law radial decay near the AdS boundary, and typical boundary conditions are "Dirichlet" (fix the slower fall-off mode) or "Neumann" (fix the faster fall-off mode). More generally though, these "designer gravity" theories admit a large class of boundary conditions defined by a functional relation between the two modes. While previous stability proofs have considered boundary conditions that are deformations of the Neumann theory, the goal of this paper is to analyze stability in designer gravity with boundary conditions that are irrelevant deformations of the Dirichlet theory. We obtain a lower bound on the energy using spinor charge methods and show that for the most interesting class of such boundary conditions, the theory is always stable. We argue that the deformed theory flows to a new fixed point in the ultraviolet, which is just the Neumann theory. We also derive a corresponding "effective potential" that implies stability if it has a global minimum.
We investigate the non-perturbative stability of asymptotically anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to tachyonic scalar fields with mass saturating the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. Such "designer gravity" theories admit a large class of boundary conditions at asymptotic infinity. At this mass, the asymptotic behavior of the scalar field develops a logarithmic branch, and previous attempts at proving a minimum energy theorem failed due to a large radius divergence in the spinor charge. In this paper, we finally resolve this issue and derive a lower bound on the conserved energy. Just as for masses slightly above the BF bound, a given scalar potential can admit two possible branches of the corresponding superpotential, one analytic and one non-analytic. The key point again is that existence of the non-analytic branch is necessary for the energy bound to hold. We discuss several AdS/CFT applications of this result, including the use of double-trace deformations to induce spontaneous symmetry breaking.
The weak gravity conjecture and the shear viscosity to entropy density bound place constraints on low energy effective field theories that may help to distinguish which theories can be UV completed. Recently, there have been suggestions of a possible correlation between the two constraints. In some interesting cases, the behavior was precisely such that the conjectures were mutually exclusive. Motivated by these works, we study the mass to charge and shear viscosity to entropy density ratios for charged AdS5 black branes, which are holographically dual to four-dimensional CFTs at finite temperature. We study a family of four-derivative and six-derivative perturbative corrections to these backgrounds. We identify the region in parameter space where the two constraints are satisfied and in particular find that the inclusion of the next-to-leading perturbative correction introduces wider possibilities for the satisfaction of both constraints.
We prove that the only four dimensional, stationary, rotating, asymptotically flat (analytic) vacuum black hole with a single degenerate horizon is given by the extremal Kerr solution. We also prove a similar uniqueness theorem for the extremal Kerr-Newman solution. This closes a longstanding gap in the black hole uniqueness theorems.
Motivated by the Kerr/CFT conjecture, we explore solutions of vacuum general relativity whose asymptotic behavior agrees with that of the extremal Kerr throat, sometimes called the Near-Horizon Extreme Kerr (NHEK) geometry. We argue that all such solutions are diffeomorphic to the NHEK geometry itself. The logic proceeds in two steps. We first argue that certain charges must vanish at all times for any solution with NHEK asymptotics. We then analyze these charges in detail for linearized solutions. Though one can choose the relevant charges to vanish at any initial time, these charges are not conserved. As a result, requiring the charges to vanish at all times is a much stronger condition. We argue that all solutions satisfying this condition are diffeomorphic to the NHEK metric.
The recently-conjectured Kerr/CFT correspondence posits a field theory dual to dynamics in the near-horizon region of an extreme Kerr black hole with certain boundary conditions. We construct a boundary stress tensor for this theory via covariant phase space techniques. The structure of the stress tensor indicates that any dual theory is a discrete light cone quantum theory, in agreement with recent arguments by Balasubramanian et al. The key technical step in our construction is the addition of an appropriate counter-term to the symplectic structure, which is necessary to make the theory fully covariant and to resolve a subtle problem involving the integrability of charges.
We give a general analysis of AdS boundary conditions for spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger fields and investigate boundary conditions preserving supersymmetry for a graviton multiplet in AdS_4. Linear Rarita-Schwinger fields in AdS_d are shown to admit mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions when their mass is in the range $0 \leq |m| < 1/2l_{AdS}$. We also demonstrate that mixed boundary conditions are allowed for larger masses when the inner product is "renormalized" accordingly with the action. We then use the results obtained for |m| = 1/l_{AdS} to explore supersymmetric boundary conditions for N = 1 AdS_4 supergravity in which the metric and Rarita-Schwinger fields are fluctuating at the boundary. We classify boundary conditions that preserve boundary supersymmetry or superconformal symmetry. Under the AdS/CFT dictionary, Neumann boundary conditions in d=4 supergravity correspond to gauging the superconformal group of the 3-dimensional CFT describing M2-branes, while N = 1 supersymmetric mixed boundary conditions couple the CFT to N = 1 superconformal topologically massive gravity.
Boundary conditions for massive fermions are investigated in AdS_d for $d \ge 2$. For fermion masses in the range $0 \le |m| < 1/2\ell$ with $\ell$ the AdS length, the standard notion of normalizeability allows a choice of boundary conditions. As in the case of scalars at or slightly above the Breitenlohner-Freedman (BF) bound, such boundary conditions correspond to multi-trace deformations of any CFT dual. By constructing appropriate boundary superfields, for d=3,4,5 we identify joint scalar/fermion boundary conditions which preserve either ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetry or ${\cal N}=1$ superconformal symmetry on the boundary. In particular, we identify boundary conditions corresponding via AdS/CFT (at large N) to a 595-parameter family of double-trace marginal deformations of the low-energy theory of N M2-branes which preserve ${\cal N} =1$ superconformal symmetry. We also establish that (at large N and large 't Hooft coupling $λ$) there are no marginal or relevant multi-trace deformations of 3+1 ${\cal N} =4$ super Yang-Mills which preserve even ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetry.
We investigate the stability of asymptotically anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to tachyonic scalar fields with mass at or slightly above the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. The boundary conditions in these ``designer gravity'' theories are defined in terms of an arbitrary function W. Previous work had suggested that the energy in designer gravity is bounded below if i) W has a global minimum and ii) the scalar potential admits a superpotential P. More recently, however, certain solutions were found (numerically) to violate the proposed energy bound. We resolve the discrepancy by observing that a given scalar potential can admit two possible branches of the corresponding superpotential, P_{\pm}. When there is a P_- branch, we rigorously prove a lower bound on the energy; the P_+ branch alone is not sufficient. Our numerical investigations i) confirm this picture, ii) confirm other critical aspects of the (complicated) proofs, and iii) suggest that the existence of P_- may in fact be necessary (as well as sufficient) for the energy of a designer gravity theory to be bounded below.
We use AdS/CFT to investigate i) high energy collisions with balls of deconfined plasma surrounded by a confining phase and ii) the rapid localized heating of a deconfined plasma. Both of these processes are dual to collisions with black holes, where they result in the nucleation of a new "arm" of the horizon reaching out in the direction of the incident object. We study the resulting non-equilibrium dynamics in a universal limit of the gravitational physics which may indicate universal behavior of deconfined plasmas at large N_c. Process (i) produces "virtual" arms of the plasma ball, while process (ii) can nucleate surprisingly large bubbles of a higher temperature phase.
The physical process version of the first law for black holes states that the passage of energy and angular momentum through the horizon results in a change in area $\fracκ{8 π} ΔA = ΔE - ΩΔJ$, so long as this passage is quasi-stationary. A similar physical process first law can be derived for any bifurcate Killing horizon in any spacetime dimension $d \ge 3$ using much the same argument. However, to make this law non-trivial, one must show that sufficiently quasi-stationary processes do in fact occur. In particular, one must show that processes exist for which the shear and expansion remain small, and in which no new generators are added to the horizon. Thorne, MacDonald, and Price considered related issues when an object falls across a d=4 black hole horizon. By generalizing their argument to arbitrary $d \ge 3$ and to any bifurcate Killing horizon, we derive a condition under which these effects are controlled and the first law applies. In particular, by providing a non-trivial first law for Rindler horizons, our work completes the parallel between the mechanics of such horizons and those of black holes for $d \ge 3$. We also comment on the situation for d=2.
We consider asymptotically anti-de Sitter gravity coupled to tachyonic scalar fields with mass at or slightly above the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound in d greater than or equal to 4 spacetime dimensions. The boundary conditions in these ``designer gravity'' theories are defined in terms of an arbitrary function W. We give a general argument that the Hamiltonian generators of asymptotic symmetries for such systems will be finite, and proceed to construct these generators using the covariant phase space method. The direct calculation confirms that the generators are finite and shows that they take the form of the pure gravity result plus additional contributions from the scalar fields. By comparing the generators to the spinor charge, we derive a lower bound on the gravitational energy when i) W has a global minimum, ii) the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound is not saturated, and iii) the scalar potential V admits a certain type of "superpotential."