English

Black Strings and p-Branes are Unstable

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-01-23 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of small perturbations around black strings and branes which are low energy solutions of string theory. For simplicity we focus attention on the zero charge case and show that there are unstable modes for a range of time frequency and wavelength in the extra 10D10-D dimensions. These perturbations can be stabililized if the extra dimensions are compactified to a scale smaller than the minimum wavelength for which instability occurs and thus will not affect large astrophysical black holes in four dimensions. We comment on the implications of this result for the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9301052,
  title  = {Black Strings and p-Branes are Unstable},
  author = {R. Gregory and R. Laflamme},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9301052},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages plain TeX, 2 figures (not included), EFI-93-02 (TeX corrected)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:44:47.986Z