arXiv subjects

Bogdan Ganchev

Publications and source records attributed to Bogdan Ganchev.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Gravitational electric-magnetic duality at the light ring and quasinormal mode isospectrality in effective field theories

Black hole perturbations are characterized by a superposition of damped exponentials known as quasinormal modes. In general relativity, the spectra of parity-even and parity-odd quasinormal modes coincide -- a property known as isospectrality, which is typically broken by corrections beyond general relativity. Recently, certain higher-derivative operators were shown to preserve isospectrality in the high-frequency (eikonal) regime. Motivated by the relation between the light ring Penrose limit and the eikonal limit, we study isospectrality in a class of plane-wave spacetimes. In general relativity, we show that dynamical metric fluctuations on these backgrounds admit a gravitational analog of electric-magnetic duality, which enforces isospectrality. Requiring this duality to persist in the presence of higher-derivative corrections constrains the couplings so that isospectrality is preserved. We conclude that gravitational electric-magnetic duality at the light ring is the organizing principle behind isospectrality in the eikonal limit, and we conjecture that this remains true for other duality-invariant corrections to general relativity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Holography of quarter-BPS AdS bubbles

We consider the quarter-BPS sector of the AdS$_5$/CFT$_4$ duality, and provide a precise matching between specific CFT states and supergravity geometries beyond the linearized approximation. In the bulk, we focus on AdS bubbles geometries that fit within a consistent truncation to five-dimensional gauged supergravity. We show that the BPS equations can be decoupled, and study the resulting geometries both perturbatively and numerically. Applying the holographic dictionary, we compute the expectation values of light chiral primaries in these backgrounds. This data allows us to determine the dual CFT state up to quadratic order in the fluctuations, and to provide non-trivial consistency checks of the result. The resulting state is expressed as a linear combination of half-BPS double-trace operators, and of the unique $[2,0,2]$ quarter-BPS operator of the theory. As an application, we compute three-point functions involving two quarter-BPS operators and a half-BPS operator in the supergravity regime, finding an explicit example of a correlator that differs from its free theory value and that is therefore not protected.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Gravitational Atoms from Topological Stars

We study the bound states of a massive scalar field around a topological star, and show that these are strictly normal modes. This yields a genuine gravitational atom, sharply distinguishing horizonless objects from black holes. We show that the modes are controlled by the field's Compton wavelength compared to the size of the star. When the Compton wavelength is large, the field forms a cloud with a hydrogen-like spectrum, while in the opposite regime it is localized along timelike trajectories. When the two scales are comparable the spectrum becomes richer, and we characterize it in detail allowing the field to carry electric charge and Kaluza--Klein momentum.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Microstrata

Microstrata are the non-extremal analogues of superstrata: they are smooth, non-extremal (non-BPS) solitonic solutions to IIB supergravity whose deep-throat limits approximate black holes. Using perturbation theory and numerical methods, we construct families of solutions using a consistent truncation to three-dimensional supergravity. The most general families presented here involve two continuous parameters, or amplitudes, and four quantized parameters that set the angular momenta and energy levels. Our solutions are asymptotic to the vacuum of the D1-D5 system: AdS$_3 \times S^3 \times T^4$. Using holography, we show that the they are dual to multi-particle states in the D1-D5 CFT involving a large number of mutually non-BPS supergravitons and we determine the anomalous dimensions of these states from the binding energies in supergravity. These binding energies are uniformly negative and depend non-linearly on the amplitudes of the states. In one family of solutions, smoothness restricts some of the fields to lie on a special locus of the parameter space. Using precision holography we show that this special locus can be identified with the multi-particle states constructed via the standard OPE of the single-particle constituents. Our numerical analysis shows that microstrata are robust at large amplitudes and the solutions can be obtained to very high precision.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Black Hole Multipoles in Higher-Derivative Gravity

We consider a broad family of higher-derivative extensions of four-dimensional Einstein gravity and study the multipole moments of rotating black holes therein. We carefully show that the various definitions of multipoles carry over from general relativity, and compute these multipoles for higher-derivative Kerr using the ACMC expansion formalism. We obtain the mass $M_{n}$ and current $S_{n}$ multipoles as a series expansions in the dimensionless spin; in some cases we are able to resum these series into closed-form expressions. Moreover, we observe the existence of intriguing relations between the corrections to the parity-odd multipoles $S_{2n}\neq 0$ and $M_{2n+1}\neq 0$ that break equatorial symmetry, and the parity-preserving corrections that only modify $S_{2n+1}$ and $M_{2n}$. Further, we comment on the higher-derivative corrections to multipole ratios for Kerr, and we discuss the phenomenological implications of the corrections to the multipole moments for current and future gravitational wave experiments.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

On Supersymmetric Multipole Ratios

Four-dimensional supersymmetric black holes are static and so have all vanishing multipoles. Nevertheless, it is possible to define finite multipole ratios for these black holes, by taking the ratio of (finite) multipoles of supersymmetric multicentered geometries and then taking the black hole scaling limit of the multipole ratios within these geometries. An alternative way to calculate these multipole ratios is to deform the supersymmetric black hole slightly into a non-extremal, rotating black hole, calculate the multipole ratios of this altered black hole, and then take the supersymmetric limit of the ratios. Bena and Mayerson observed that for a class of microstate geometries, these two a priori completely different methods give spectacular agreement for the resulting supersymmetric black hole multipole ratios. They conjectured that this agreement is due to the smallness of the entropy parameter for these black holes. We correct this conjecture and give strong evidence supporting a more refined conjecture, which is that the agreement of multipole ratios as calculated with these two different methods is due to both the microstate geometry and its corresponding black hole having a property we call "large dipole", which can be interpreted as their center of mass being far away from its apparent center.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Elliptical and Purely NS Superstrata

We analyze the BPS equations in the ``superstratum sector'' of three-dimensional gauged supergravity. We obtain multi-parameter supersymmetric solutions that include elliptical deformations of the supertubes that underlie standard superstrata. We uplift the three-dimensional solutions to obtain the corresponding six-dimensional geometries. This yields new families of elliptically-deformed, ambi-bolar hyper-Kähler geometries in four dimensions with a non-tri-holomorphic $U(1)$ isometry. We also find a new family of scaling superstrata whose S-dual lives entirely within the NS-sector of supergravity, and will thus be more amenable to exact analysis using string probes. In all these new superstrata, including the scaling ones, if the momentum charge is non-zero we find that the ellipse stays away from the degeneration locus in which the ellipse becomes flat.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

AdS$_3$ holography for non-BPS geometries

By using the approach introduced in arXiv:2107.09677 we construct non-BPS solutions of 6D $(1,0)$ supergravity coupled to two tensor multiplets as a perturbation of AdS$_3\times S^3$. These solutions are both regular and asymptotically AdS$_3\times S^3$, so according to the standard holographic framework they must have a dual CFT interpretation as non-supersymmetric heavy operators of the D1-D5 CFT. We provide quantitative evidence that such heavy CFT operators are bound states of a large number of light BPS operators that are mutually non-BPS.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

New Superstrata from Three-Dimensional Supergravity

We find a two-parameter family of {\it generalized superstrata} that emerge as smooth, supersymmetric solutions in three-dimensional gauged supergravity coupled to additional scalar fields. This new family of generalized superstrata are smooth microstate geometries and may be thought of as supersymmetric Coulomb-branch extensions of the original superstrata in which the underlying supertube undergoes an elliptical deformation. These solutions had already been obtained numerically, and as series solutions, to the equations of motion, and some of them were conjectured to be supersymmetric. Here we prove the supersymmetry of an entire two-parameter family and we obtain a highly non-trivial analytic and smooth solution for a one-parameter limit in which the global symmetry of the metric is enhanced to $SO(3)$. We also confirm that the other known families of microstrata are {\it not} supersymmetric. We conclude with a cursory analysis of some of the singular brane distributions that can be accessed from three-dimensional gauged supergravity while preserving the same supersymmetries as the superstratum, and therefore of the three-charge black hole.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Q-Balls Meet Fuzzballs: Non-BPS Microstate Geometries

We construct a three-parameter family of non-extremal microstate geometries, or "microstrata," that are dual to states and deformations of the D1-D5 CFT. These families are non-extremal analogues of superstrata. We find these microstrata by using a Q-ball-inspired Ansatz that reduces the equations of motion to solving for eleven functions of one variable. We then solve this system both perturbatively and numerically and the results match extremely well. We find that the solutions have normal mode frequencies that depend upon the amplitudes of the excitations. We also show that, at higher order in perturbations, some of the solutions, having started with normalizable modes, develop a "non-normalizable" part, suggesting that the microstrata represent states in a perturbed form of the D1-D5 CFT. This paper is intended as a "Proof of Concept" for the Q-ball-inspired approach, and we will describe how it opens the way to many interesting follow-up calculations both in supergravity and in the dual holographic field theory.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Plausible scenario for a generic violation of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in asymptotically flat four dimensions

We present a plausible counterexample to the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in the four-dimensional Einstein-Scalar theory with asymptotically flat boundary conditions. Our setup stems from the analysis of the massive Klein-Gordon equation on a fixed Kerr black hole background. In particular, we construct the quasinormal spectrum numerically, and analytically in the WKB approximation, then go on to compute its backreaction on the Kerr geometry. In the regime of parameters where the analytic and numerical techniques overlap we find perfect agreement. We give strong evidence for the existence of a nonlinear instability at late times.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

Scalar Hairy Black Holes in Four Dimensions are Unstable

We present a numerical analysis of the stability properties of the black holes with scalar hair constructed by Herdeiro and Radu. We prove the existence of a novel gauge where the scalar field perturbations decouple from the metric perturbations, and analyse the resulting quasinormal mode spectrum. We find unstable modes with characteristic growth rates which for uniformly small hair are almost identical to those of a massive scalar field on a fixed Kerr background.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Superradiant instability in AdS

The phenomenon of superradiance in the context of asymptotically global AdS spacetimes is investigated with particular accent on its effect on the stability of the systems under consideration. To this end, the concept of an asymptotically AdS spacetime is explained, together with its implications on the boundary conditions at $\mathcal{I}$, as well as the Newman-Penrose-Teukolsky formalism, whereby the Teukolsky master equation in a most general form for Kerr-AdS is given. Furthermore, work done in the cases of RN-AdS and Kerr-AdS is laid out in a concise manner, putting emphasis on the important steps taken in determining the endpoint of the superradiant instability in the two configurations. For the former this turns out to be a black hole with reduced charge and a static charged scalar condensate around it, whereas for the latter two of the more probable outcomes are presented, both of which imply a violation of one of the cosmic censorships.

hep-th↗

arXiv2015

Three-particle Complexes in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors

We map the three-body problem in two dimensions onto one particle in a three dimensional potential treatable by a purposely-developed boundary-matching-matrix method. We evaluate binding energies of trions $X^{\pm}$, excitons bound by a donor/acceptor charge $X^{D/A}$, and overcharged acceptors/donors in two-dimensional atomic crystals of transition metal dichalcogenides, where interaction between charges features logarithmic behavior at intermediate distances. We find that dissociation energy of $X^{\pm}$ is, typically, much larger than that of localised exciton complexes, so that trions are more resilient to heating, despite that their recombination line in optics is much less red-shifted from the exciton line, as compared to $X^{D/A}$

cond-mat.mes-hall↗