The Inside Story: Quasilocal Tachyons and Black Holes

Journal Article · Fri Jan 13 04:00:00 EST 2006 · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.73.064016· OSTI ID:877976

Horowitz, Gary T; Silverstein, Eva

We analyze the fate of excitations in regions of closed string tachyon condensate, a question crucial for understanding unitarity in a class of black holes in string theory. First we introduce a simple new example of quasilocal tachyon condensation in a globally stable AdS/CFT background, and review tachyons' appearance in black hole physics. Then we calculate forces on particles and fields in a tachyon phase using a field theoretic model with spatially localized exponentially growing time dependent masses. This model reveals two features, both supporting unitary evolution in the bulk of spacetime. First, the growing energy of fields sourced by sets of (real and virtual) particles in the tachyon phase yields outward forces on them, leaving behind only combinations which do not source any fields. Secondly, requiring the consistency of perturbative string theory imposes cancellation of a BRST anomaly, which also yields a restricted set of states. Each of these effects supports the notion of a black hole final state arising from string-theoretic dynamics replacing the black hole singularity.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 877976
• Report Number(s): SLAC-PUB-11616; hep-th/0601032
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields), Journal Name: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields) Vol. 73; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
BLACK HOLES
CANCELLATION
PHYSICS
SINGULARITY
SPACE-TIME
TACHYONS
Theory-HEP
HEPTH
UNITARITY