Oscar J. C. Dias

Kerr-CFT and gravitational perturbations

Motivated by the Kerr-CFT conjecture, we investigate perturbations of the near-horizon extreme Kerr spacetime. The Teukolsky equation for a massless field of arbitrary spin is solved. Solutions fall into two classes: normal modes and traveling waves. Imposing suitable (outgoing) boundary conditions, we find that there are no unstable modes. The explicit form of metric perturbations is obtained using the Hertz potential formalism, and compared with the Kerr-CFT boundary conditions. The energy and angular momentum associated with scalar field and gravitational normal modes are calculated. The energy is positive in all cases. The behaviour of second order perturbations is discussed.

Gravitational Turbulent Instability of Anti-de Sitter Space

Bizon and Rostworowski have recently suggested that anti-de Sitter spacetime might be nonlinearly unstable to transfering energy to smaller and smaller scales and eventually forming a small black hole. We consider pure gravity with a negative cosmological constant and find strong support for this idea. While one can start with a single linearized mode and add higher order corrections to construct a nonlinear geon, this is not possible starting with a linear combination of two or more modes. One is forced to add higher frequency modes with growing amplitude. The implications of this turbulent instability for the dual field theory are discussed.

Gravitational radiation in D-dimensional space-times

Gravitational wave solutions to Einstein’s equations and their generation are examined in D-dimensional flat spacetimes. First the plane wave solutions are analyzed; then the wave generation is studied with the solution for the metric tensor being obtained with the help of retarded D-dimensional Green’s functions. Because of the difficulties in handling the wave tails in odd dimensions we concentrate our study on even dimensions. We compute the metric quantities in the wave zone in terms of the energy-momentum tensor at retarded time. Some special cases of interest are studied. First we study the slow motion approximation, where the D-dimensional quadrupole formula is deduced. Within the quadrupole approximation, we consider two cases of interest: a particle in circular orbit and a particle falling radially into a higher dimensional Schwarzschild black hole. Then we turn our attention to the gravitational radiation emitted during collisions lasting zero seconds, i.e., hard collisions. We compute the gravitational energy radiated during the collision of two point particles, in terms of a cutoff frequency. In the case in which at least one of the particles is a black hole, we argue that this cutoff frequency should be close to the lowest gravitational quasinormal frequency. In this context, we compute the scalar quasinormal frequencies of higher dimensional Schwarzschild black holes. Finally, as an interesting new application of this formalism, we compute the gravitational energy release during the quantum process of black hole pair creation. These results might be important in light of the recent proposal that there may exist extra dimensions in the Universe, one consequence of which may be black hole creation at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Small Kerr-anti-de Sitter black holes are unstable

Superradiance in black hole spacetimes can trigger instabilities. Here we show that, due to superradiance, small Kerr-anti-de Sitter black holes are unstable. Our demonstration uses a matching procedure, in a long wavelength approximation.

On the Nonlinear Stability of Asymptotically Anti-de Sitter Solutions

Despite the recent evidence that anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime is nonlinearly unstable, we argue that many asymptotically AdS solutions are nonlinearly stable. This includes geons, boson stars and black holes. As part of our argument, we calculate the frequencies of long-lived gravitational quasinormal modes of AdS black holes in various dimensions. We also discuss a new class of asymptotically AdS solutions describing noncoalescing black hole binaries.

Black holes with only one Killing field

We present the first examples of black holes with only one Killing field. The solutions describe five dimensional AdS black holes with scalar hair. The black holes are neither stationary nor axisymmetric, but are invariant under a single Killing field which is tangent to the null generators of the horizon. Some of these solutions can be viewed as putting black holes into rotating boson stars. Others are related to the endpoint of a superradiant instability. For given mass and angular momentum (within a certain range) several black hole solutions exist.

Instability and new phases of higher-dimensional rotating black holes

It has been conjectured that higher-dimensional rotating black holes become unstable at a sufficiently large value of the rotation, and that new black holes with pinched horizons appear at the threshold of the instability. We search numerically and find the stationary axisymmetric perturbations of Myers-Perry black holes with a single spin that mark the onset of the instability and the appearance of the new black hole phases. We also find new ultraspinning Gregory-Laflamme instabilities of rotating black strings and branes.

An instability of higher-dimensional rotating black holes

We present the first example of a linearized gravitational instability of an asymptotically at vacuum black hole. We study perturbations of a Myers-Perry black hole with equal angular momenta in an odd number of dimensions. We find no evidence of any instability in five or seven dimensions, but in nine dimensions, for sufficiently rapid rotation, we find perturbations that grow exponentially in time. The onset of instability is associated with the appearance of time-independent perturbations which generically break all but one of the rotational symmetries. This is interpreted as evidence for the existence of a new 70-parameter family of black hole solutions with only a single rotational symmetry. We also present results for the Gregory-Laflamme instability of rotating black strings, demonstrating that rotation makes black strings more unstable.

Instability of nonsupersymmetric smooth geometries

Recently certain nonsupersymmetric solutions of type IIb supergravity were constructed [V. Jejjala, O. Madden, S. F. Ross, and G. Titchener, Phys. Rev. D 71, 124030 (2005).], which are everywhere smooth, have no horizons and are thought to describe certain non-Bogomolnyi-Prasad-Sommerfield microstates of the D1-D5 system. We demonstrate that these solutions are all classically unstable. The instability is a generic feature of horizonless geometries with an ergoregion. We consider the end point of this instability and argue that the solutions decay to supersymmetric configurations. We also comment on the implications of the ergoregion instability for Mathurs fuzzball proposal.

Ultraspinning instability of rotating black holes

Rapidly rotating Myers-Perry black holes in d{>=}6 dimensions were conjectured to be unstable by Emparan and Myers. In a previous publication, we found numerically the onset of the axisymmetric ultraspinning instability in the singly spinning Myers-Perry black hole in d=7, 8, 9. This threshold also signals a bifurcation to new branches of axisymmetric solutions with pinched horizons that are conjectured to connect to the black ring, black Saturn and other families in the phase diagram of stationary solutions. We firmly establish that this instability is also present in d=6 and in d=10, 11. The boundary conditions of the perturbations are discussed in detail for the first time, and we prove that they preserve the angular velocity and temperature of the original Myers-Perry black hole. This property is fundamental to establishing a thermodynamic necessary condition for the existence of this instability in general rotating backgrounds. We also prove a previous claim that the ultraspinning modes cannot be pure gauge modes. Finally we find new ultraspinning Gregory-Laflamme instabilities of rotating black strings and branes that appear exactly at the critical rotation predicted by the aforementioned thermodynamic criterium. The latter is a refinement of the Gubser-Mitra conjecture.