English

Grey Galaxies in $AdS_5$

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-11-05 v2

Abstract

It has recently been conjectured \cite{Kim:2023sig} that the end point of the rotational superradiant instability of black holes in AdS4AdS_4 is a Grey Galaxy: an ω=1\omega=1 black hole sitting at the centre of AdS4AdS_4, surrounded by a large disk of rapidly rotating gravitons and other bulk fields. In this paper we study Grey Galaxies in AdS5AdS_5. In this case, the rotational group is of rank 2, and so has two distinct angular velocities ω1\omega_1 and ω2\omega_2. We demonstrate that AdS5AdS_5 hosts two qualitatively distinct Grey Galaxy phases: the first with either ω11\omega_1\approx 1 or ω21\omega_2\approx 1, and the second with both angular velocities 1\approx 1. We use these results to present a conjecture for a part of the phase diagram of N=4{\cal N}=4 Yang-Mills (as a function of energy and the two angular momenta) that displays several phase transitions between regular black holes and various Grey Galaxy phases. We present an explicit gravitational construction of the phases in which ω1\omega_1 and ω2\omega_2 are both parametrically close to unity, and demonstrate that the corresponding boundary stress tensor is the sum of two pieces. The first is the stress tensor of the central black hole. The second - the contribution of the bulk gas - takes the form of the stress tensor of an equilibrated boundary conformal fluid, rotating at the given angular speeds ωi\omega_i. We also briefly comment on the structure of Grey Galaxies in AdSDAdS_D for D>5D > 5.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.06904,
  title  = {Grey Galaxies in $AdS_5$},
  author = {Kabir Bajaj and Vipul Kumar and Shiraz Minwalla and Jyotirmoy Mukherjee and Asikur Rahaman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.06904},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

A new subsection and an appendix have been added with an improved understanding of the fluid nature of the bulk stress tensor

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:28:31.824Z