Gary T. Horowitz

It has recently been shown that there exist stable inhomogeneous neutral black strings in higher dimensional gravity. These solutions were motivated by the fact that the corresponding homogeneous solutions are unstable. We show that there exist new inhomogeneous black string and black p-brane solutions even when the corresponding translationally invariant solutions are stable. In particular, we show that there exist inhomogeneous near-extremal black strings and p-branes. Some of these solutions remain inhomogeneous even when the size of the compact direction (at infinity) is very small.

It has recently been shown that there exist stable inhomogeneous neutral black strings in higher dimensional gravity. These solutions were motivated by the fact that the corresponding homogeneous solutions are unstable. We show that there exist new inhomogeneous black string and black p-brane solutions even when the corresponding translationally invariant solutions are stable. In particular, we show there exist inhomogeneous near-extremal black strings and p-branes. Some of these solutions remain inhomogeneous even when the size of the compact direction (at infinity) is very small.

By the AdS/CFT correspondence, the expectation value of certain local operators in the CFT is given by the asymptotic value of supergravity fields. We show that these local expectation values contain a remarkable amount of information about small sources deep inside AdS_p x S^q. In particular, they contain essentially all the multipole moments. More importantly, one can use them to determine the size of a spherical source. This is not a small effect: The size appears in an exponentially large contribution to the expectation values. This provides an easy way for the CFT to distinguish stars from black holes with the same mass, or to distinguish different "giant graviton" configurations.

We investigate the decay of a scalar field outside a Schwarzschild anti–de Sitter black hole. This is determined by computing the complex frequencies associated with quasinormal modes. There are qualitative differences from the asymptotically flat case, even in the limit of small black holes. In particular, for a given angular dependence, the decay is always exponential—there are no power law tails at late times. In terms of the AdS-CFT correspondence, a large black hole corresponds to an approximately thermal state in the field theory, and the decay of the scalar field corresponds to the decay of a perturbation of this state. Thus one obtains the time scale for the approach to thermal equilibrium. We compute these time scales for the strongly coupled field theories in three, four, and six dimensions, which are dual to string theory in asymptotically AdS spacetimes.

We examine the evaporation of a small black hole on a brane in a world with large extra dimensions. Since the masses of many Kaluza-Klein modes are much smaller than the Hawking temperature of the black hole, it has been claimed that most of the energy is radiated into these modes. We show that this is incorrect. Most of the energy goes into the modes on the brane. This raises the possibility of observing Hawking radiation in future high energy colliders if there are large extra dimensions.

It is commonly believed that small black holes in AdS_5 x S^5 can be described by the ten dimensional Schwarzschild solution. This requires that the self-dual five-form (which is nonzero in the background) does not fall through the horizon and cause the black hole to grow. We verify that this is indeed the case: There are static solutions to the five-form field equations in a ten dimensional Schwarzschild spacetime. Similar results hold for other backgrounds AdS_p x S^q of interest in supergravity.

We investigate the decay of a scalar field outside a Schwarzschild anti de Sitter black hole. This is determined by computing the complex frequencies associated with quasinormal modes. There are qualitative differences from the asymptotically flat case, even in the limit of small black holes. In particular, for a given angular dependence, the decay is always exponential - there are no power law tails at late times. In terms of the AdS/CFT correspondence, a large black hole corresponds to an approximately thermal state in the field theory, and the decay of the scalar field corresponds to the decay of a perturbation of this state. Thus one obtains the timescale for the approach to thermal equilibrium. We compute these timescales for the strongly coupled field theories in three, four, and six dimensions which are dual to string theory in asymptotically AdS spacetimes.

To test recent ideas about lower dimensional gravity bound to a brane, we construct exact solutions describing black holes on two-branes in four dimensions. We find that 2+1 gravity is indeed recovered at large distances along the brane, although there are significant deviations at smaller scales. Large black holes appear as flattened "pancakes", with a relatively small extent off the brane. Black hole thermodynamics is discussed from both the standpoint of the brane and the bulk. We comment on the analogous black holes bound to higher dimensional branes.