Related papers: Singularities and Closed String Tachyons
We present exact inhomogeneous and anisotropic cosmological solutions of low-energy string theory containing dilaton and axion fields. The spacetime metric possesses cylindrical symmetry. The solutions describe ever-expanding universes with…
Singularities in any physical theory are either remarkable indicators of the unknown underlying fundamental theory, or indicate a change in the description of the physical reality. In General Relativity there are three fundamental kinds of…
One way to understand more about spacetime singularities is to construct solutions of the Einstein equations containing singularities with prescribed properties. The heuristic ideas of the BKL picture suggest that oscillatory singularities…
The c=1 matrix model, with or without a type 0 hat, has an exact quantum solution corresponding to closed string tachyon condensation along a null surface. The condensation occurs, and spacetime dissolves, at a finite retarded time on I^+.…
The discovery of universe's late-time acceleration and dark energy has overseen a great deal of research into cosmological singularities and in this brief review, we discuss all the prominent developments in this field for the best part of…
The gravitational strength of the central singularity in spherically symmetric space-times is investigated. Necessary conditions for the singularity to be gravitationally weak are derived and it is shown that these are violated in a wide…
Recent results on classical and quantum strings in a variety of black hole and cosmological spacetimes, in various dimensions, are presented. The curved backgrounds under consideration include the $2+1$ black hole anti de Sitter spacetime…
The future finite-time singularities emerging in alternative gravity dark energy models are classified and studied in Jordan and Einstein frames. It is shown that such singularity may occur even in flat spacetime for the specific choice of…
String theory relies on spacetime supersymmetry to guarantee the existence of stable vacua. In this review, we survey two features of non-supersymmetric strings that challenge both aspects: the appearance of tachyons and worldsheet…
In the last four decades different programs have been carried out aiming at understanding the final fate of gravitational collapse of massive bodies once some prescriptions for the behaviour of gravity in the strong field regime are…
At the threshold of black hole formation in the gravitational collapse of a scalar field a naked singularity is formed through a universal critical solution that is discretely self-similar. We study the global spacetime structure of this…
New exact vacuum solutions with various singularities in the plane-symmetric spacetime are shown, and they are applied to the analysis of inhomogeneous cosmological models and colliding gravitational waves. One of the singularities can be…
We study the spherical gravitational collapse of a compact object under the approximation that the radial pressure is identically zero, and the tangential pressure is related to the density by a linear equation of state. It turns out that…
In this review I discuss various aspects of some of the recently constructed black hole and soliton solutions in string theory. I begin with the axionic instanton and related solutions of bosonic and heterotic string theory. The latter…
A straightforward generalization of the celebrated uniqueness theorem to dimensions greater than four was recently found to fail in two pure gravity cases - the 5d rotating black ring and the black string on R^{3,1} * S^1. Two amendments…
The origin of Big Bang singularity in 3+1 dimensions can be understood in an exact string theory background obtained by an analytic continuation of a cigar like geometry with a nontrivial dilaton. In a T-dual conformal field theory picture…
D-branes, topological defects in string theory on which string endpoints can live, may give new insight into the understanding of the cosmological evolution of the Universe at early epochs. We analyze the dynamics of D-branes in curved…
We present here a brief review and discussion on recent developments in the theory of spacetime singularities. After mentioning some key motivations on the main ideas and concepts involved, we take the approach that the singularities will…
We analyze the spectrum of the bosonic and superstring on the orbifold of the space-time by a boost, leading to the cosmological singularity. We show that the modular invariance leads to the spectrum where the twisted sector tachyon,…
Singular spacetimes are a natural prediction of Einstein's theory. Most memorable are the singular centers of black holes and the big bang. However, dilatonic extensions of Einstein's theory can support nonsingular spacetimes. The…