Lorentzian Black Hole Research Articles

Black hole excited states from broken translations in Euclidean time

We prepare an excited finite temperature state in N\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{N} $$\\end{document} = 4 SYM by means of a Euclidean path integral with a relevant deformation. The deformation explicitly breaks imaginary-time translations along the thermal circle whilst preserving its periodicity. We then study how the state relaxes to thermal equilibrium in real time. Computations are performed using real-time AdS/CFT, by constructing novel mixed-signature black holes in numerical relativity corresponding to Schwinger-Keldysh boundary conditions. These correspond to deformed cigar geometries in the Euclidean, glued to a pair of dynamical spacetimes in the Lorentzian.The maximal extension of the Lorentzian black hole exhibits a ‘causal shadow’, a bulk region which is spacelike separated from both boundaries. We show that causal shadows are generic in path-integral prepared states where imaginary-time translations along the thermal circle are broken.

The power of Lorentzian wormholes

As shown by Louko and Sorkin in 1995, topology change in Lorentzian signature involves spacetimes with singular points, which they called crotches. We modify their construction to obtain Lorentzian semiclassical wormholes in asymptotically AdS. These solutions are obtained by inserting crotches on known saddles, like the double-cone or multiple copies of the Lorentzian black hole. The crotches implement swap-identifications, and are classically located near an extremal surface. The resulting Lorentzian wormholes have an instanton action equal to their area, which is responsible for topological suppression in any number of dimensions.We conjecture that including such Lorentzian wormhole spacetimes is equivalent to path integrating over all mostly Euclidean smooth spacetimes. We present evidence for this by reproducing semiclassical features of the genus expansion of the spectral form factor, and of a late-time two point function, by summing over the moduli space of Lorentzian wormholes. As a final piece of evidence, we discuss the Lorentzian version of West-Coast replica wormholes.

Equilibrium density matrices for the 2D black hole sigma models from an integrable spin chain

This work concerns the quantum Lorentzian and Euclidean black hole non-linear sigma models. For the Euclidean black hole sigma model an equilibrium density matrix is proposed, which reproduces the modular invariant partition function from the 2001 paper of Maldacena, Ooguri and Son. For the Lorentzian black hole sigma model, using its formulation as a gauged SL(2, ℝ) WZW model, we describe the linear and Hermitian structure of its space of states and also propose an expression for the equilibrium density matrix. Our analysis is guided by the results of the study of a certain critical, integrable spin chain. In the scaling limit, the latter exhibits the key features of the Lorentzian black hole sigma model including the same global symmetries, the same algebra of extended conformal symmetry and a continuous spectrum of conformal dimensions.

Holographic excited states in AdS black holes

We have recently presented a geometry dual to a Schwinger-Keldysh closed time contour, with two equal β/2 length Euclidean sections, which can be thought of as dual to the Thermo Field Dynamics formulation of the boundary CFT. In this work we study non-perturbative holographic excitations of the thermal vacuum by turning on asymptotic Euclidean sources. In the large-N approximation the states are found to be thermal coherent states and we manage to compute its eigenvalues. We pay special attention to the high temperature regime where the manifold is built from pieces of Euclidean and Lorentzian black hole geometries. In this case, the real time segments of the Schwinger-Keldysh contour get connected by an Einstein-Rosen wormhole through the bulk, which we identify as the exterior of a single maximally extended black hole. The Thermal-AdS case is also considered but, the Lorentzian regions become disconnected, its results mostly follows from the zero temperature case.

Horizon strings and interior states of a black hole

We provide an explicit construction of classical strings that have endpoints on the horizons of the 2D Lorentzian black hole. We argue that this is a dual description of geodesics that are localized around the horizon which are the Lorentzian counterparts of the winding strings of the Euclidean black hole (the cigar geometry). Identifying these with the states of the black hole, we can expect that issues of black hole information loss can be posed sharply in terms of a fully quantizable string theory.

Hairpin branes and D-branes behind the horizon

We study Lorentzian D-particles in linear dilaton and the two dimensional black hole backgrounds. The D-particle trajectory follows an accelerated trajectory which is smeared by stringy corrections. For the black hole background we find that the portion of the trajectory behind the horizon appears to an asymptotic observer as ghost D-particle. This suggests a way of constructing a matrix model for the Lorentzian black hole background.

D-brane propagation in two-dimensional black hole geometries

We study propagation of D0-brane in two-dimensional Lorentzian black hole backgrounds by the method of boundary conformal field theory of SL(2,R)/U(1) supercoset at level k. Typically, such backgrounds arise as near-horizon geometries of k coincident non-extremal NS5-branes, where 1/k measures curvature of the backgrounds in string unit and hence size of string worldsheet effects. At classical level, string worldsheet effects are suppressed and D0-brane propagation in the Lorentzian black hole geometry is simply given by the Wick rotation of D1-brane contour in the Euclidean black hole geometry. Taking account of string worldsheet effects, boundary state of the Lorentzian D0-brane is formally constructible via Wick rotation from that of the Euclidean D1-brane. However, the construction is subject to ambiguities in boundary conditions. We propose exact boundary states describing the D0-brane, and clarify physical interpretations of various boundary states constructed from different boundary conditions. As it falls into the black hole, the D0-brane radiates off to the horizon and to the infinity. From the boundary states constructed, we compute physical observables of such radiative process. We find that part of the radiation to infinity is in effective thermal distribution at the Hawking temperature. We also find that part of the radiation to horizon is in the Hagedorn distribution, dominated by massive, highly non-relativistic closed string states, much like the tachyon matter. Remarkably, such distribution emerges only after string worldsheet effects are taken exactly into account. From these results, we observe that nature of the radiation distribution changes dramatically across the conifold geometry k=1 (k=3 for the bosonic case), exposing the `string - black hole transition' therein.

Anholonomic Soliton-Dilaton and Black Hole Solutions in General Relativity

A new method of construction of integral varieties of Einstein equations in three dimensional (3D) and 4D gravity is presented whereby, under corresponding redefinition of physical values with respect to anholonomic frames of reference with associated nonlinear connections, the structure of gravity field equations is substantially simplified. It is shown that there are 4D solutions of Einstein equations which are constructed as nonlinear superpositions of soliton solutions of 2D (pseudo) Euclidean sine-Gordon equations (or of Lorentzian black holes in Jackiw-Teitelboim dilaton gravity). The Belinski-Zakharov-Meison solitons for vacuum gravitational field equations are generalized to various cases of two and three coordinate dependencies, local anisotropy and matter sources. The general framework of this study is based on investigation of anholonomic soliton-dilaton black hole structures in general relativity. We prove that there are possible static and dynamical black hole, black torus and disk/cylinder like solutions (of non-vacuum gravitational field equations) with horizons being parametrized by hypersurface equations of rotation ellipsoid, torus, cylinder and another type configurations. Solutions describing locally anisotropic variants of the Schwarzschild-- Kerr (black hole), Weyl (cylindrical symmetry) and Neugebauer--Meinel (disk) solutions with anisotropic variable masses, distributions of matter and interaction constants are shown to be contained in Einstein's gravity. It is demonstrated in which manner locally anisotropic multi-soliton-- dilaton-black hole type solutions can be generated.

Geometrodynamics of sine-Gordon solitons

The relationship between N-soliton solutions to the Euclidean sine-Gordon equation and Lorentzian black holes in Jackiw-Teitelboim dilaton gravity is investigated, with an emphasis on the important role played by the dilaton in determining the black hole geometry. We show how an N-soliton solution can be used to construct ``sine-Gordon'' coordinates for a black hole of mass M, and construct the transformation to more standard ``Schwarzchild-like'' coordinates. For $\mathrm{N}=1$ and 2, we find explicit closed form solutions to the dilaton equations of motion in soliton coordinates, and find the relationship between the soliton parameters and the black hole mass. Remarkably, the black hole mass is non-negative for arbitrary soliton parameters. In the one-soliton case the coordinates are shown to cover smoothly a region containing the whole interior of the black hole as well as a finite neighborhood outside the horizon. A Hamiltonian analysis is performed for slicings that approach the soliton coordinates on the interior, and it is shown that there is no boundary contribution from the interior. Finally we speculate on the sine-Gordon solitonic origin of black hole statistical mechanics.