English

On the fate of black string instabilities: An Observation

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-11-11 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Gregory and Laflamme (hep-th/9301052) have argued that an instability causes the Schwarzschild black string to break up into disjoint black holes. On the other hand, Horowitz and Maeda (arXiv:hep-th/0105111) derived bounds on the rate at which the smallest sphere can pinch off, showing that, if it happens at all, such a pinch-off can occur only at infinite affine parameter along the horizon. An interesting point is that, if a singularity forms, such an infinite affine parameter may correspond to a finite advanced time -- which is in fact a more appropriate notion of time at infinity. We argue below that pinch-off at a finite advanced time is in fact a natural expectation under the bounds derived by Horowitz and Maeda.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0504045,
  title  = {On the fate of black string instabilities: An Observation},
  author = {Donald Marolf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0504045},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, RevTex, 1 figure, references added