Kevin Goldstein

Holography of Charged Dilaton Black Holes

We study charged dilaton black branes in AdS4. Our system involves a dilaton ϕ coupled to a Maxwell field Fμν with dilaton-dependent gauge coupling,

Holography of dyonic dilaton black branes

\frac{1}{{{g^2}}} = {f^2}\left( \phi \right)

Moduli and (un)attractor black hole thermodynamics

. First, we find the solutions for extremal and near extremal branes through a combination of analytical and numerical techniques. The near horizon geometries in the simplest cases, where f(ϕ) = eαϕ, are Lifshitz-like, with a dynamical exponent z determined by α. The black hole thermodynamics varies in an interesting way with α, but in all cases the entropy is vanishing and the specific heat is positive for the near extremal solutions. We then compute conductivity in these backgrounds. We find that somewhat surprisingly, the AC conductivity vanishes like ω2 at T = 0 independent of α. We also explore the charged black brane physics of several other classes of gauge-coupling functions f(ϕ). In addition to possible applications in AdS/CMT, the extremal black branes are of interest from the point of view of the attractor mechanism. The near horizon geometries for these branes are universal, independent of the asymptotic values of the moduli, and describe generic classes of endpoints for attractor flows which are different from AdS2 × R2.

A c-function for non-supersymmetric attractors

We study black branes carrying both electric and magnetic charges in Einstein-Maxwell theory coupled to a dilaton-axion in asymptotically anti de Sitter space. After reviewing and extending earlier results for the case of electrically charged branes, we characterise the thermodynamics of magnetically charged branes. We then focus on dyonic branes in theories which enjoy an SL(2,R) electric-magnetic duality. Using SL(2,R), we are able to generate solutions with arbitrary charges starting with the electrically charged solution, and also calculate transport coefficients. These solutions all exhibit a Lifshitz-like near-horizon geometry. The system behaves as expected for a charged fluid in a magnetic field, with non-vanishing Hall conductance and vanishing DC longitudinal conductivity at low temperatures. Its response is characterised by a cyclotron resonance at a frequency proportional to the magnetic field, for small magnetic fields. Interestingly, the DC Hall conductance is related to the attractor value of the axion. We also study the attractor flows of the dilaton-axion, both in cases with and without an additional modular-invariant scalar potential. The flows exhibit intricate behaviour related to the duality symmetry. Finally, we briefly discuss attractor flows in more general dilaton-axion theories which do not enjoy SL(2,R) symmetry.

One entropy function to rule them all

We investigate four-dimensional spherically symmetric black hole solutions in gravity theories with massless, neutral scalars non-minimally coupled to gauge fields. In the non-extremal case, we explicitly show that, under the variation of the moduli, the scalar charges appear in the first law of black hole thermodynamics. In the extremal limit, the near horizon geometry is AdS2 × S2 and the entropy does not depend on the values of moduli at infinity. We discuss the attractor behaviour by using Sen’s entropy function formalism as well as the effective potential approach and their relation with the results previously obtained through special geometry method. We also argue that the attractor mechanism is at the basis of the matching between the microscopic and macroscopic entropies for the extremal non-BPS Kaluza–Klein black hole.

First-order flows and stabilisation equations for non-BPS extremal black holes

We present a c-function for spherically symmetric, static and asymptotically flat solutions in theories of four-dimensional gravity coupled to gauge fields and moduli. The c-function is valid for both extremal and non-extremal black holes. It monotonically decreases from infinity and in the static region acquires its minimum value at the horizon, where it equals the entropy of the black hole. Higher dimensional cases, involving p-form gauge fields, and other generalisations are also discussed.

On anharmonic stabilisation equations for black holes

We study the entropy of extremal four dimensional black holes and five dimensional black holes and black rings is a unified framework using Sens entropy function and dimensional reduction. The five dimensional black holes and black rings we consider project down to either static or stationary black holes in four dimensions. The analysis is done in the context of two derivative gravity coupled to abelian gauge fields and neutral scalar fields. We apply this formalism to various examples including U(1)3 minimal supergravity.

Tension of confining strings at low temperature

We derive a generalised form of flow equations for extremal static and rotating non-BPS black holes in four-dimensional ungauged N = 2 supergravity coupled to vector multiplets. For particular charge vectors, we give stabilisation equations for the scalars, analogous to the BPS case, describing full known solutions. Based on this, we propose a generic ansatz for the stabilisation equations, which surprisingly includes ratios of harmonic functions.

Heating up branes in gauged supergravity

A bstractWe investigate the stabilisation equations for sufficiently general, yet regular, extremal (supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric) and non-extremal black holes in four-dimensional N = 2 supergravity using both the H-FGK approach and a generalisation of Denef’s formalism. By an explicit calculation we demonstrate that the equations necessarily contain an anharmonic part, even in the static, spherically symmetric and asymptotically flat case.

CFT duals of black rings with higher derivative terms

A bstractIn the low temperature confining phase of QCD or QCD-like theories it is challenging to capture the temperature dependence of observables through AdS/CFT. Using the blackfold approach we compute the quark-anti-quark linear static potential in the low temperature confining phase, taking into account the thermal excitations of the string. We find the explicit temperature dependence of the string tension and notice that, as naturally expected, tension decreases as temperature increases. We have also generalized the blackfold approach for the computation of the Wilson loops, making it directly applicable to a large class of backgrounds.