The Gregory–Laflamme instability of the Schwarzschild black string exterior

Abstract

In this paper, a direct rigorous mathematical proof of the Gregory–Laflamme instability for the five-dimensional Schwarzschild black string is presented. Under a choice of ansatz for the perturbation and a gauge choice, the linearized vacuum Einstein equation reduces to an ordinary differential equation (ODE) problem for a single function. In this work, a suitable rescaling and change of variables is applied, which casts the ODE into a Schrödinger eigenvalue equation to which an energy functional is assigned. It is then shown by direct variational methods that the lowest eigenfunction gives rise to an exponentially growing mode solution, which has admissible behavior at the future event horizon and spacelike infinity. After the addition of a pure gauge solution, this gives rise to a regular exponentially growing mode solution of the linearized vacuum Einstein equation in harmonic/transverse-traceless gauge.