scholarly journals What prevents gravitational collapse in string theory?

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 1644018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir D. Mathur

It is conventionally believed that if a ball of matter of mass [Formula: see text] has a radius close to [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]GM then it must collapse to a black hole. But string theory microstates (fuzzballs) have no horizon or singularity, and they do not collapse. We consider two simple examples from classical gravity to illustrate how this violation of our intuition happens. In each case, the ‘matter’ arises from an extra compact dimension, but the topology of this extra dimension is not trivial. The pressure and density of this matter diverge at various points, but this is only an artifact of dimensional reduction; thus, we bypass results like Buchadahl’s theorem. Such microstates give the entropy of black holes, so these topologically nontrivial constructions dominate the state space of quantum gravity.

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1537-1540 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMIR D. MATHUR

The entropy and information puzzles arising from black holes cannot be resolved if quantum gravity effects remain confined to a microscopic scale. We use concrete computations in nonperturbative string theory to argue for three kinds of nonlocal effects that operate over macroscopic distances. These effects arise when we make a bound state of a large number of branes, and occur at the correct scale to resolve the paradoxes associated with black holes.


2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (supp01c) ◽  
pp. 1001-1004
Author(s):  
SAMIR D. MATHUR

Results from string theory strongly suggest that formation and evaporation of black holes is a unitary process. Thus we must find a flaw in the semiclassical reasoning that implies a loss of information. We propose a new criterion that limits the domain of classical gravity: the hypersurfaces of a foliation cannot be stretched too much.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Stefano Bellucci ◽  
Bhupendra Nath Tiwari

We study the state-space geometry of various extremal and nonextremal black holes in string theory. From the notion of the intrinsic geometry, we offer a state-space perspective to the black hole vacuum fluctuations. For a given black hole entropy, we explicate the intrinsic geometric meaning of the statistical fluctuations, local and global stability conditions, and long range statistical correlations. We provide a set of physical motivations pertaining to the extremal and nonextremal black holes, namely, the meaning of the chemical geometry and physics of correlation. We illustrate the state-space configurations for general charge extremal black holes. In sequel, we extend our analysis for various possible charge and anticharge nonextremal black holes. From the perspective of statistical fluctuation theory, we offer general remarks, future directions, and open issues towards the intrinsic geometric understanding of the vacuum fluctuations and black holes in string theory.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (32) ◽  
pp. 6089-6131 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. RAMÓN MEDRANO ◽  
N. G. SÁNCHEZ

An effective string theory in physically relevant cosmological and black hole space–times is reviewed. Explicit computations of the quantum string entropy, partition function and quantum string emission by black holes (Schwarzschild, rotating, charged, asymptotically flat, de Sitter dS and anti-de Sitter AdS space–times) in the framework of effective string theory in curved backgrounds provide an amount of new quantum gravity results as: (i) gravitational phase transitions appear with a distinctive universal feature: a square-root branch point singularity in any space–time dimensions. This is of the type of the de Vega–Sánchez transition for the thermal self-gravitating gas of point particles. (ii) There are no phase transitions in AdS alone. (iii) For dS background, upper bounds of the Hubble constant H are found, dictated by the quantum string phase transition. (iv) The Hawking temperature and the Hagedorn temperature are the same concept but in different (semiclassical and quantum) gravity regimes respectively. (v) The last stage of black hole evaporation is a microscopic string state with a finite string critical temperature which decays as usual quantum strings do in nonthermal pure quantum radiation (no information loss). (vi) New lower string bounds are given for the Kerr–Newman black hole angular momentum and charge, which are entirely different from the upper classical bounds. (vii) Semiclassical gravity states undergo a phase transition into quantum string states of the same system, these states are duals of each other in the precise sense of the usual classical–quantum (wave–particle) duality, which is universal irrespective of any symmetry or isommetry of the space–time and of the number or the kind of space–time dimensions.


2000 ◽  
Vol 15 (30) ◽  
pp. 4877-4882 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMIR D. MATHUR

The recent progress in string theory strongly suggests that formation and evaporation of black holes is a unitary process. This fact makes it imperative that we find a flaw in the semiclassical reasoning that implies a loss of information. We propose a new criterion that limits the domain of classical gravity: the hypersurfaces of a foliation cannot be stretched too much. This conjectured criterion may have important consequences for the early universe.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca V. Iliesiu ◽  
Gustavo J. Turiaci

Abstract An important open question in black hole thermodynamics is about the existence of a “mass gap” between an extremal black hole and the lightest near-extremal state within a sector of fixed charge. In this paper, we reliably compute the partition function of Reissner-Nordström near-extremal black holes at temperature scales comparable to the conjectured gap. We find that the density of states at fixed charge does not exhibit a gap; rather, at the expected gap energy scale, we see a continuum of states. We compute the partition function in the canonical and grand canonical ensembles, keeping track of all the fields appearing through a dimensional reduction on S2 in the near-horizon region. Our calculation shows that the relevant degrees of freedom at low temperatures are those of 2d Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity coupled to the electromagnetic U(1) gauge field and to an SO(3) gauge field generated by the dimensional reduction.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (11) ◽  
pp. 1530028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Carlip ◽  
Dah-Wei Chiou ◽  
Wei-Tou Ni ◽  
Richard Woodard

We present a bird's-eye survey on the development of fundamental ideas of quantum gravity, placing emphasis on perturbative approaches, string theory, loop quantum gravity (LQG) and black hole thermodynamics. The early ideas at the dawn of quantum gravity as well as the possible observations of quantum gravitational effects in the foreseeable future are also briefly discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 191 ◽  
pp. 07003
Author(s):  
Xavier Calmet ◽  
Boris Latosh

We show that alongside the already observed gravitational waves, quantum gravity predicts the existence of two additional massive classical fields and thus two new massive waves. We set a limit on their masses using data from Eöt-Wash-like experiments. We point out that the existence of these new states is a model independent prediction of quantum gravity. We explain how these new classical fields could impact astrophysical processes and in particular the binary inspirals of black holes. We calculate the emission rate of these new states in binary inspirals astrophysical processes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (14) ◽  
pp. 1944005
Author(s):  
Samir D. Mathur

The vacuum must contain virtual fluctuations of black hole microstates for each mass [Formula: see text]. We observe that the expected suppression for [Formula: see text] is counteracted by the large number [Formula: see text] of such states. From string theory, we learn that these microstates are extended objects that are resistant to compression. We argue that recognizing this ‘virtual extended compression-resistant’ component of the gravitational vacuum is crucial for understanding gravitational physics. Remarkably, such virtual excitations have no significant effect for observable systems like stars, but they resolve two important problems: (a) gravitational collapse is halted outside the horizon radius, removing the information paradox, (b) spacetime acquires a ‘stiffness’ against the curving effects of vacuum energy; this ameliorates the cosmological constant problem posed by the existence of a planck scale [Formula: see text].


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (12) ◽  
pp. 1544022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos A. R. Herdeiro ◽  
Eugen Radu

Kerr black holes (BHs) have their angular momentum, [Formula: see text], bounded by their mass, [Formula: see text]: [Formula: see text]. There are, however, known BH solutions violating this Kerr bound. We propose a very simple universal bound on the rotation, rather than on the angular momentum, of four-dimensional, stationary and axisymmetric, asymptotically flat BHs, given in terms of an appropriately defined horizon linear velocity, [Formula: see text]. The [Formula: see text] bound is simply that [Formula: see text] cannot exceed the velocity of light. We verify the [Formula: see text] bound for known BH solutions, including some that violate the Kerr bound, and conjecture that only extremal Kerr BHs saturate the [Formula: see text] bound.


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