arXiv subjects

Iosif Bena

Publications and source records attributed to Iosif Bena.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Fermionic and bosonic mass deformations of N=4 SYM and their bulk supergravity dual

We examine the AdS-CFT dual of arbitrary (non)supersymmetric fermionic mass deformations of N=4 SYM, and investigate how the backreaction of the RR and NS-NS two-form potentials dual to the fermion masses contribute to Coulomb-branch potential of D3 branes, which we interpret as the bulk boson mass matrix. Using representation-theory and supergravity arguments we show that the fermion masses completely determine the trace of this matrix, and that on the other hand its traceless components have to be turned on as non-normalizable modes. Our result resolves the tension between the belief that the AdS bulk dual of the trace of the boson mass matrix (which is not a chiral operator) is a stringy excitation with dimension of order $(g_s N)^{1/4}$ and the existence of non-stringy supergravity flows describing theories where this trace is nonzero, by showing that the stringy mode does not parameterize the sum of the squares of the boson masses but rather its departure from the trace of the square of the fermion mass matrix. Hence, asymptotically-AdS flows can only describe holographically theories where the sums of the squares of the bosonic and fermionic masses are equal, which is consistent with the weakly-coupled result that only such theories can have a conformal UV fixed point.

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arXiv2015

Non-BPS multi-bubble microstate geometries

We construct the first smooth horizonless supergravity solutions that have two topologically-nontrivial three-cycles supported by flux, and that have the same mass and charges as a non-extremal D1-D5-P black hole. Our configurations are solutions to six-dimensional ungauged supergravity coupled to a tensor multiplet, and uplift to solutions of Type IIB supergravity. The solutions represent multi-center generalizations of the non-BPS solutions of Jejjala, Madden, Ross, and Titchener, which have over-rotating angular momenta. By adding an additional Gibbons-Hawking center, we succeed in lowering one of the two angular momenta below the cosmic censorship bound, and bringing the other very close to this bound. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to construct multi-center horizonless solutions corresponding to non-extremal black holes, and offer the prospect of ultimately establishing that finite-temperature black holes have nontrivial structure at the horizon.

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arXiv2015

Instabilities of microstate geometries with antibranes

One can obtain very large classes of horizonless microstate geometries corresponding to near-extremal black holes by placing probe supertubes whose action has metastable minima inside certain supersymmetric bubbling solutions. We show that these minima can lower their energy when the bubbles move in certain directions in the moduli space, which implies that these near-extremal microstates are in fact unstable once one considers the dynamics of all their degrees of freedom. The decay of these solutions corresponds to Hawking radiation, and we compare the emission rate and frequency to those of the corresponding black hole. Our analysis supports the expectation that generic non-extremal black holes microstate geometries should be unstable. It also establishes the existence of a new type of instabilities for antibranes in highly-warped regions with charge dissolved in fluxes.

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arXiv2015

AdS_3: the NHEK generation

It was argued in arXiv:1203.4227 that the five-dimensional near-horizon extremal Kerr (NHEK) geometry can be embedded in String Theory as the infrared region of an infinite family of non-supersymmetric geometries that have D1, D5, momentum and KK monopole charges. We show that there exists a method to embed these geometries into asymptotically-AdS_3 x S^3/Z_N solutions, and hence to obtain infinite families of flows whose infrared is NHEK. This indicates that the CFT dual to the NHEK geometry is the IR fixed point of a Renormalization Group flow from a known local UV CFT and opens the door to its explicit construction.

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arXiv2015

Brane polarization is no cure for tachyons

Anti-M2 and anti-D3 branes placed in regions with charges dissolved in fluxes have a tachyon in their near-horizon region, which causes these branes to repel each other. If the branes are on the Coulomb branch this tachyon gives rise to a runaway behavior, but when the branes are polarized into five-branes this tachyon only appears to lower the energy of the polarized branes, without affecting its stability. We analyze brane polarization in the presence of a brane-brane-repelling tachyon and show that when the branes are polarized along the direction of the tachyon the polarized shell is unstable. This implies that tachyons cannot be cured by brane polarization and indicates that, at least in a certain regime of parameters, anti-D3 branes polarized into NS5 branes at the bottom of the Klebanov-Strassler solution have an instability.

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arXiv2015

Habemus Superstratum! A constructive proof of the existence of superstrata

We construct the first example of a superstratum: a class of smooth horizonless supergravity solutions that are parameterized by arbitrary continuous functions of (at least) two variables and have the same charges as the supersymmetric D1-D5-P black hole. We work in Type IIB string theory on T^4 or K3 and our solutions involve a subset of fields that can be described by a six-dimensional supergravity with two tensor multiplets. The solutions can thus be constructed using a linear structure, and we give an explicit recipe to start from a superposition of modes specified by an arbitrary function of two variables and impose regularity to obtain the full horizonless solutions in closed form. We also give the precise CFT description of these solutions and show that they are not dual to descendants of chiral primaries. They are thus much more general than all the known solutions whose CFT dual is precisely understood. Hence our construction represents a substantial step toward the ultimate goal of constructing the fully generic superstratum that can account for a finite fraction of the entropy of the three-charge black hole in the regime of parameters where the classical black hole solution exists.

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arXiv2014

Giant Tachyons in the Landscape

We study the dynamics of localized and fully backreacting anti-D3 branes at the tip of the Klebanov-Strassler geometry. We use a non-supersymmetric version of the Polchinski-Strassler analysis to compute the potential for anti-D3 branes to polarize into all kinds of five-brane shells in all possible directions. We find that generically there is a direction along which the brane-brane interaction is repulsive, which implies that anti-D3 branes are tachyonic. Hence, even though anti-D3 branes can polarize into five-branes, the solution will most likely be unstable. This indicates that anti-D3 brane uplift may not result in stable de Sitter vacua.

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arXiv2014

On the Oscillation of Species

We describe a new class of BPS objects called magnetubes: their supersymmetry is determined by their magnetic charges, while their electric charges can oscillate freely between different species. We show how to incorporate these objects into microstate geometries and create BPS solutions in which the charge densities rotate through different U(1) species as one moves around a circle within the microstate geometry. Our solutions have the same "time-like" supersymmetry as five-dimensional, three-charge black holes but, in various parts of the solution, the supersymmetry takes the "null" form that is normally associated with magnetic charges. It is this property that enables the species oscillation of magnetubes to be compatible with supersymmetry. We give an example in which the species oscillate non-trivially around a circle within a microstate geometry, and yet the energy-momentum tensor and metric are completely independent of this circle: only the amplitude of the oscillation influences the metric.

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arXiv2014

Regular 3-charge 4D black holes and their microscopic description

The perturbative $α^{\prime}$ corrections to Type-IIA String Theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau three-fold allow the construction of regular three-charge supersymmetric black holes in four dimensions, whose entropy scales with the charges as $S \sim \left( p^1 p^2 p^3\right)^{\frac{2}{3}} $. We construct an M-theory uplift of these quantum black holes and show that they can be interpreted as arising from three stacks of M2 branes on a conical singularity. This in turns allow us relate them via a series of dualities to a system of D3 branes carrying momentum and thus to give a microscopic interpretation of their entropy.

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arXiv2014

Black-Hole Entropy from Supergravity Superstrata States

There are, by now, several arguments that superstrata, which represent D1-D5-P bound states that depend upon arbitrary functions of two variables and that preserve four supersymmetries, exist in string theory, and that their gravitational back-reaction results in smooth horizonless solutions. In this paper we examine the shape and density modes of the superstratum and give strong evidence that the back-reacted supergravity solution allows for fluctuation modes whose quantization reproduces the entropy growth of black holes as a function of the charges. In particular, we argue that the shape modes of the superstratum that lie purely within the non-compact space-time directions account for at least $1/\sqrt{6}$ of the entropy of the D1-D5-P black hole and propose a way in which the rest of the entropy could be captured by superstratum fluctuations. We complete the picture by conjecturing a relationship between bound states of multiple superstrata and momentum excitations of different twisted sectors of the dual CFT.

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arXiv2014

Tachyonic Anti-M2 Branes

We study the dynamics of anti-M2 branes in a warped Stenzel solution with M2 charges dissolved in fluxes by taking into account their full backreaction on the geometry. The resulting supergravity solution has a singular magnetic four-form flux in the near-brane region. We examine the possible resolution of this singularity via the polarization of anti-M2 branes into M5 branes, and compute the corresponding polarization potential for branes smeared on the finite-size four-sphere at the tip of the Stenzel space. We find that the potential has no minimum. We then use the potential for smeared branes to compute the one corresponding to a stack of localized anti-M2 branes, and use this potential to compute the force between two anti-M2 branes at tip of the Stenzel space. We find that this force, which is zero in the probe approximation, is in fact repulsive. This surprising result points to a tachyonic instability of anti-M2 branes in backgrounds with M2 brane charge dissolved in flux.

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arXiv2014

Coiffured Black Rings

We describe a new type of hair on supersymmetric black string and black ring solutions, which produces the largest known violation of black hole uniqueness, parameterized by an arbitrary function and hence an infinite number of continuous parameters. The new solutions can have non-trivial density profiles for the electric fields along the horizon, and yet have a geometry that is regular, although generically not infinitely differentiable, at the horizon. Both neutral and charged probes can cross the horizon without experiencing divergent forces. We also find restricted examples, parameterized by a few arbitrary continuous parameters, where the charge densities fluctuate but the metric does not and hence is completely differentiable. Our new class of solutions owes its existence to a mechanism reminiscent of the Q-ball: in the simplest examples the metric has more symmetry than the matter that supports it.

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arXiv2013

Resolving the Structure of Black Holes: Philosophizing with a Hammer

We give a broad conceptual review of what we have learned about black holes and their microstate structure from the study of microstate geometries and their string theory limits. We draw upon general relativity, supergravity, string theory and holographic field theory to extract universal ideas and structural features that we expect to be important in resolving the information problem and understanding the microstate structure of Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes. In particular, we emphasize two conceptually and physically distinct ideas, with different underlying energy scales: a) the transition that supports the microstate structure and prevents the formation of a horizon and b) the representation of the detailed microstate structure itself in terms of fluctuations around the transitioned state. We also show that the supergravity mechanism that supports microstate geometries becomes, in the string theory limit, either brane polarization or the excitation of non-Abelian degrees of freedom. We thus argue that if any mechanism for supporting structure at the horizon scale is to be given substance within string theory then it must be some manifestation of microstate geometries.

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arXiv2013

Polchinski-Strassler does not uplift Klebanov-Strassler

Anti-D3-branes at the tip of the Klebanov-Strassler solution with D3-charge dissolved in fluxes give rise, in the probe approximation, to a metastable state. The fully back-reacted smeared solution has singular three-form fluxes in the IR, whose presence suggests a stringy resolution by brane polarization a la Polchinski-Strassler. In this paper we show that there is no polarization into anti-D5-branes wrapping the $S^2$ of the conifold at a finite radius. The singularities therefore do not seem to be physical, signaling that antibranes cannot be used to uplift AdS and obtain a very large landscape of de Sitter vacua in string theory.

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arXiv2013

Anti-D3's - Singular to the Bitter End

We study the full backreaction of anti-D3 branes smeared over the tip of the deformed conifold. Requiring the 5-form flux and warp factor at the tip to be that of anti-D3 branes, we find a simple power counting argument showing that if the three-form fluxes have no IR singularity, they will be necessarily imaginary-anti-self-dual. Hence the only solution with anti-D3 branes at the tip of the conifold that is regular in the IR and the UV is the anti-Klebanov-Strassler solution, and there is no regular solution whose D3-charge is negative in the IR and positive in the UV.

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arXiv2013

Almost BPS but still not renormalized

A key feature of BPS multi-center solutions is that the equations controlling the positions of these centers are not renormalized as one goes from weak to strong coupling. In particular, this means that brane probes can capture the same information as the fully back-reacted supergravity solution. We investigate this non-renormalization property for non-supersymmetric, extremal "almost-BPS" solutions at intermediate coupling when one of the centers is considered as a probe in the background created by the other centers. We find that despite the lack of supersymmetry, the probe action reproduces exactly the equations underlying the fully back-reacted solution, which indicates that these equations also do not receive quantum corrections. In the course of our investigation we uncover the relation between the charge parameters of almost-BPS supergravity solutions and their quantized charges, which solves an old puzzle about the quantization of the charges of almost-BPS solutions.

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arXiv2012

Horizons cannot save the Landscape

Solutions with anti-D3 branes in a Klebanov-Strassler geometry with positive charge dissolved in fluxes have a certain singularity corresponding to a diverging energy density of the RR and NS-NS three-form fluxes. There are many hopes and arguments for and against this singularity, and we attempt to settle the issue by examining whether this singularity can be cloaked by a regular event horizon. This is equivalent to the existence of asymptotically Klebanov-Tseytlin or Klebanov-Strassler black holes whose charge measured at the horizon has the opposite sign to the asymptotic charge. We find that no such KT solution exists. Furthermore, for a large class of KS black holes we considered, the charge at the horizon must also have the same sign as the asymptotic charge, and is completely determined by the temperature, the number of fractional branes and the gaugino masses of the dual gauge theory. Our result suggests that antibrane singularities in backgrounds with charge in the fluxes are unphysical, which in turn raises the question as to whether antibranes can be used to uplift AdS vacua to deSitter ones. Our results also point out to a possible instability mechanism for the antibranes.

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arXiv2012

Persistent anti-brane singularities

Anti-D-branes inserted in warped throat geometries (supported by fluxes that carry D-brane charges) develop unphysical singularities. It has been argued that these singularities could be resolved when one goes beyond the linearized approximation or includes the effects of brane polarization. In this paper we consider anti-D6 branes, whose singularities have been shown to exist at the full non-linear level, and demonstrate that there is no D8 brane polarization that can resolve the singularity. We comment on the potential implications of this result for the resolution of anti-D3 brane singularities in the Klebanov-Strassler geometry.

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