arXiv subjects

David Kastor

Publications and source records attributed to David Kastor.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

Geometry of AdS-Melvin Spacetimes

We study asymptotically AdS generalizations of Melvin spacetimes, describing gravitationally bound tubes of magnetic flux. We find that narrow fluxtubes, carrying strong magnetic fields but little total flux, are approximately unchanged from the $Λ=0$ case at scales smaller than the AdS scale. However, fluxtubes with weak fields, which for $Λ=0$ can grow arbitrarily large in radius and carry unbounded magnetic flux, are limited in radius by the AdS scale and like the narrow fluxtubes carry only small total flux. As a consequence, there is a maximum magnetic flux $Φ_{max} = 2π/\sqrt{-Λ}$ that can be carried by static fluxtubes in AdS. For flux $Φ_{tot}<Φ_{max}$ there are two branches of solutions, with one branch always narrower in radius than the other. We compute the ADM mass and tensions for AdS-Melvin fluxtube, finding that the wider radius branch of solutions always has lower mass. In the limit of vanishing flux, this branch reduces to the AdS soliton.

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arXiv2019

Schottky Anomaly of deSitter Black Holes

The interplay of black hole and cosmological horizons introduces distinctive thermodynamic behavior for deSitter black holes, including well-known upper bounds for the mass and entropy. We point to a new such feature, a Schottky peak in the heat capacity of Schwarzschild-deSitter (SdS) black holes. With this behavior in mind, we explore statistical models for the underlying quantum degrees of freedom of SdS holes. While a simple two-state spin model gives Schottky behavior, in order to capture the non-equilibrium nature of the SdS system we consider a system with a large number of non-interacting spins. We examine to what extent constrained states of this system reproduce the thermodynamic properties of the black hole. We also review results of a recent study of particle production in SdS spacetimes in light of the Schottky anomaly and our spin models.

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arXiv2018

Black Hole Enthalpy and Scalar Fields

The mass of an AdS black hole represents its enthalpy, which in addition to internal energy, generally includes the energy required to assemble the system in its environment. In this paper, we consider black holes immersed in a more complex environment, generated by a scalar field with an exponential potential. In the analogue of the AdS vacuum, which we call dilaton-AdS, the scalar field has non-trivial behavior, breaking the hyperscaling symmetry of AdS and modifying the asymptotic form of the spacetime. We find that the scalar field falloff at infinity makes novel contributions to the ADM mass and spatial tensions of dilaton-AdS black holes. We derive a first law and Smarr formula for planar dilaton-AdS black holes. We study the analogue of thermodynamic volume in this system and show that the mass of a black hole again represents its enthalpy.

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arXiv2018

Evolving Black Holes in Inflation

We present an analytic, perturbative solution to the Einstein equations with a scalar field that describes dynamical black holes in a slow-roll inflationary cosmology. We show that the metric evolves quasi-statically through a sequence of Schwarzschild-de Sitter like metrics with time dependent cosmological constant and mass parameters, such that the cosmological constant is instantaneously equal to the value of the scalar potential. The areas of the black hole and cosmological horizons each increase in time as the effective cosmological constant decreases, and the fractional area increase is proportional to the fractional change of the cosmological constant, times a geometrical factor. For black holes ranging in size from much smaller than to comparable to the cosmological horizon, the pre-factor varies from very small to order one. The "mass first law" and the "Schwarzschild-de Sitter patch first law" of thermodynamics are satisfied throughout the evolution.

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arXiv2017

Black Hole Thermodynamics with Dynamical Lambda

We study evolution and thermodynamics of a slow-roll transition between early and late time de Sitter phases, both in the homogeneous case and in the presence of a black hole, in a scalar field model with a generic potential having both a maximum and a positive minimum. Asymptotically future de Sitter spacetimes are characterized by ADM charges known as cosmological tensions. We show that the late time de Sitter phase has finite cosmological tension when the scalar field oscillation around its minimum is underdamped, while the cosmological tension in the overdamped case diverges. We compute the variation in the cosmological and black hole horizon areas between the early and late time phases, finding that the fractional change in horizon area is proportional to the corresponding fractional change in the effective cosmological constant. We show that the extended first law of thermodynamics, including variation in the effective cosmological constant, is satisfied between the initial and final states, and discuss the dynamical evolution of the black hole temperature.

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arXiv2017

Lovelock Branes

We study the problem of finding brane-like solutions to Lovelock gravity, adopting a general approach to establish conditions that a lower dimensional base metric must satisfy in order that a solution to a given Lovelock theory can be constructed in one higher dimension. We find that for Lovelock theories with generic values of the coupling constants, the Lovelock tensors (higher curvature generalizations of the Einstein tensor) of the base metric must all be proportional to the metric. Hence, allowed base metrics form a subclass of Einstein metrics. This subclass includes so-called `universal metrics', which have been previously investigated as solutions to quantum-corrected field equations. For specially tuned values of the Lovelock couplings, we find that the Lovelock tensors of the base metric need to satisfy fewer constraints. For example, for Lovelock theories with a unique vacuum there is only a single such constraint, a case previously identified in the literature, and brane solutions can be straightforwardly constructed.

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arXiv2016

Genuine Cosmic Hair

We show that asymptotically future deSitter (AFdS) spacetimes carry 'genuine' cosmic hair; information that is analogous to the mass and angular momentum of asymptotically flat spacetimes and that characterizes how an AFdS spacetime approaches its asymptotic form. We define new 'cosmological tension' charges associated with future asymptotic spatial translation symmetries, which are analytic continuations of the ADM mass and tensions of asymptotically planar AdS spacetimes, and which measure the leading anisotropic corrections to the isotropic, exponential deSitter expansion rate. A cosmological Smarr relation, holding for AFdS spacetimes having exact spatial translation symmetry, is derived. This formula relates cosmological tension, which is evaluated at future infinity, to properties of the cosmology at early times, together with a 'cosmological volume' contribution that is analogous to the thermodynamic volume of AdS black holes. Smarr relations for different spatial directions imply that the difference in expansion rates between two directions at late times is related in a simple way to their difference at early times. Hence information about the very early universe can be inferred from cosmic hair, which is potentially observable in a late time deSitter phase. Cosmological tension charges and related quantities are evaluated for Kasner-deSitter spacetimes, which serve as our primary examples.

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arXiv2016

Building Cosmological Frozen Stars

Janis-Newman-Winicour (JNW) spacetimes generalize the Schwarzschild solution to include a massless scalar field. Although suffering from naked singularities, they share the `frozen star' features of Schwarzschild black holes. Cosmological versions of the JNW spacetimes were discovered some time ago by Husain, Martinez and Nunez and by Fonarev. Unlike Schwarzschild-deSitter black holes, these solutions are dynamical, and the scarcity of exact solutions for dynamical black holes in cosmological backgrounds motivates their further study. Here we show how the cosmological JNW spacetimes can be built, starting from simpler, static, higher dimensional, vacuum `JNW brane' solutions via two different generalized dimensional reduction schemes that together cover the full range of JNW parameter space. Cosmological versions of a BPS limit of charged dilaton black holes are also known. JNW spacetimes represent a different limiting case of the charged, dilaton black hole family. We expect that understanding this second data point may be key to finding cosmological versions of general, non-BPS black holes.

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arXiv2016

Extended First Law for Entanglement Entropy in Lovelock Gravity

The first law for the holographic entanglement entropy of spheres in a boundary CFT with a bulk Lovelock dual is extended to include variations of the bulk Lovelock coupling constants. Such variations in the bulk correspond to perturbations within a family of boundary CFTs. The new contribution to the first law is found to be the product of the variation $δa$ of the A-type trace anomaly coefficient for even dimensional CFTs, or more generally its extension $δa^*$ to include odd dimensional boundaries, times the ratio $S/a^*$. Since $a^*$ is a measure of the number of degrees of freedom $N$ per unit volume of the boundary CFT, this new term has the form $μδN$, where the chemical potential $μ$ is given by the entanglement entropy per degree of freedom.

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arXiv2015

Melvin Magnetic Fluxtube/Cosmology Correspondence

We explore a correspondence between Melvin magnetic fluxtubes and anisotropic cosmological solutions, which we call `Melvin cosmologies'. The correspondence via analytic continuation provides useful information in both directions. Solution generating techniques known on the fluxtube side can also be used for generating cosmological backgrounds. Melvin cosmologies interpolate between different limiting Kasner behaviors at early and late times. This has an analogue on the fluxtube side between limiting Levi-Civita behavior at small and large radii. We construct generalized Melvin fluxtubes and cosmologies in both Einstein-Maxwell theory and dilaton gravity and show that similar properties hold.

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arXiv2015

Symmetry Breaking Vacua in Lovelock Gravity

Higher curvature Lovelock gravity theories can have a number of maximally symmetric vacua with different values of the curvature. Critical surfaces in the space of Lovelock couplings separate regions with different numbers of such vacua, and there exist symmetry breaking regions with no maximally symmetric vacua. Especially in such regimes, it is interesting to ask what reduced symmetry vacua may exist. We study this question, focusing on vacua that are products of maximally symmetric spaces. For low order Lovelock theories, we assemble a map of such vacua over the Lovelock coupling space, displaying different possibilities for vacuum symmetry breaking. We see indications of interesting structure, with e.g. product vacua in Gauss-Bonnet gravity covering the entirety of the symmetry breaking regime in $5$-dimensions, but only a limited portion of it in $6$-dimensions.

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arXiv2014

Chemical Potential in the First Law for Holographic Entanglement Entropy

Entanglement entropy in conformal field theories is known to satisfy a first law. For spherical entangling surfaces, this has been shown to follow via the AdS/CFT correspondence and the holographic prescription for entanglement entropy from the bulk first law for Killing horizons. The bulk first law can be extended to include variations in the cosmological constant $Λ$, which we established in earlier work. Here we show that this implies an extension of the boundary first law to include varying the number of degrees of freedom of the boundary CFT. The thermodynamic potential conjugate to $Λ$ in the bulk is called the thermodynamic volume and has a simple geometric formula. In the boundary first law it plays the role of a chemical potential. For the bulk minimal surface $Σ$ corresponding to a boundary sphere, the thermodynamic volume is found to be proportional to the area of $Σ$, in agreement with the variation of the known result for entanglement entropy of spheres. The dependence of the CFT chemical potential on the entanglement entropy and number of degrees of freedom is similar to how the thermodynamic chemical potential of an ideal gas depends on entropy and particle number.

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arXiv2014

Non-Vacuum AdS Cosmologies and the Approach to Equilibrium of Entanglement Entropy

We extend standard results for vacuum asymptotically locally AdS (AlAdS) spacetimes, showing that such spacetimes can be constructed as foliations where the induced metric on each hypersurface satisfies Einstein's equation with stress-energy. By an appropriate choice of stress-energy on the hypersurfaces, the resulting AlAdS spacetime satisfies Einstein's equation with a negative cosmological constant and physical stress tensor. We use this construction to obtain AlAdS solutions whose boundaries are FRW cosmologies sourced by a massless scalar field or by a perfect fluid obeying the strong energy condition. We focus on FRW universes that approach Minkowski spacetime at late times, yielding AlAdS spacetimes that approach either the Poincaré patch of pure AdS or the AdS soliton, which we view as late time equilibrium states. As an application of these solutions, we use the AdS/CFT correspondence to study the approach to equilibrium of the entanglement entropy and of the boundary stress tensor of the boundary CFT. We find that the energy of the asymptotically AdS solitonic solution is consistent with the conjecture that the AdS soliton is the lowest-energy solution to Einstein's equation with negative cosmological constant. The time dependent correction to the entanglement entropy is found to decay like a power law, with rate set by the Hubble parameter and the power determined by the equation of state of the cosmic fluid.

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arXiv2014

Magnetic Fields in an Expanding Universe

We find a solution to $4D$ Einstein-Maxwell theory coupled to a massless dilaton field describing a Melvin magnetic field in an expanding universe with 'stiff matter' equation of state parameter $w=+1$. As the universe expands, magnetic flux becomes more concentrated around the symmetry axis for dilaton coupling $a<1/\sqrt{3}$ and more dispersed for $a>1/\sqrt{3}$. An electric field circulates around the symmetry axis in the direction determined by Lenz's law. For $a=0$ the magnetic flux through a disk of fixed comoving radius is proportional to the proper area of the disk. This result disagrees with the usual expectation based on a test magnetic field that this flux should be constant, and we show why this difference arises. We also find a Melvin solution in an accelerating universe with $w=-7/9$ for a dilaton field with a certain exponential potential. Our main tools are simple manipulations in $5D$ Kaluza-Klein theory and related solution generating techniques. We also discuss a number of directions for possible extensions of this work.

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arXiv2013

Conformal Tensors via Lovelock Gravity

Constructs from conformal geometry are important in low dimensional gravity models, while in higher dimensions the higher curvature interactions of Lovelock gravity are similarly prominent. Considering conformal invariance in the context of Lovelock gravity leads to natural, higher-curvature generalizations of the Weyl, Schouten, Cotton and Bach tensors, with properties that straightforwardly extend those of their familiar counterparts. As a first application, we introduce a new set of conformally invariant gravity theories in D=4k dimensions, based on the squares of the higher curvature Weyl tensors.

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arXiv2013

Sum Rule for the ADM Mass and Tensions in Planar AdS Spacetimes

An asymptotically planar AdS spacetimes is characterized by its ADM mass and tensions. We define an additional ADM charge Q associated with the scaling Killing vector of AdS, show that Q is given by a certain sum over the ADM mass and tensions and that Q vanishes on solutions to the Einstein equation with negative cosmological constant. The sum rule for the mass and tensions thus established corresponds in an AdS/CFT context to the vanishing of the trace of the boundary stress tensor. We also show that an analogous sum rule holds for local planar sources of stress-energy sources in AdS. In a simple model consisting of a static, plane symmetric source we find that the perturbative stress-energy tensor must be tracefree.

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arXiv2013

Thermodynamic Volumes and Isoperimetric Inequalities for de Sitter Black Holes

We consider the thermodynamics of rotating and charged asymptotically de Sitter black holes. Using Hamiltonian perturbation theory techniques, we derive three different first law relations including variations in the cosmological constant, and associated Smarr formulas that are satisfied by such spacetimes. Each first law introduces a different thermodynamic volume conjugate to the cosmological constant. We examine the relation between these thermodynamic volumes and associated geometric volumes in a number of examples, including Kerr-dS black holes in all dimensions and Kerr-Newman-dS black holes in D=4. We also show that the Chong-Cvetic-Lu-Pope solution of D=5 minimal supergravity, analytically continued to positive cosmological constant, describes black hole solutions of the Einstein-Chern-Simons theory and include such charged asymptotically de Sitter black holes in our analysis. In all these examples we find that the particular thermodynamic volume associated with the region between the black hole and cosmological horizons is equal to the naive geometric volume. Isoperimetric inequalities, which hold in the examples considered, are formulated for the different thermodynamic volumes and conjectured to remain valid for all asymptotically de Sitter black holes. In particular, in all examples considered, we find that for fixed volume of the observable universe, the entropy is increased by adding black holes. We conjecture that this is true in general.

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arXiv2013

On the Universality of Inner Black Hole Mechanics and Higher Curvature Gravity

Black holes are famous for their universal behavior. New thermodynamic relations have been found recently for the product of gravitational entropies over all the horizons of a given stationary black hole. This product has been found to be independent of the mass for all such solutions of Einstein-Maxwell theory in d=4,5. We study the universality of this mass independence by introducing a number of possible higher curvature corrections to the gravitational action. We consider finite temperature black holes with both asymptotically flat and (A)dS boundary conditions. Although we find examples for which mass independence of the horizon entropy product continues to hold, we show that the universality of this property fails in general. We also derive further thermodynamic properties of inner horizons, such as the first law and Smarr relation, in the higher curvature theories under consideration, as well as a set of relations between thermodynamic potentials on the inner and outer horizons that follow from the horizon entropy product, whether or not it is mass independent.

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