Nut Charged Space-times and Closed Timelike Curves on the Boundary

TL;DR

The paper develops a comprehensive framework for higher-dimensional Taub-NUT-AdS spacetimes with k=0,-1 bases, revealing that entropy is not proportional to area when NUT charge is present and that the first law constrains bolt data. It shows that the boundary of these spacetimes yields Gödel-type, causality-violating metrics in D dimensions, enabling a holographic study of quantum field theories on such backgrounds via AdS/CFT. Despite ubiquitous CTCs, the holographic stress tensor remains finite, suggesting chronology violation cannot be resolved by semiclassical gravity alone. The work highlights a rich interplay between bulk thermodynamics, boundary geometry, and holography, with potential implications for phase structure and quantum field dynamics in non-globally hyperbolic spacetimes.

Abstract

We consider higher dimensional generalizations of the four dimensional topological Taub-NUT-AdS solutions, where the angular spheres are replaced by planes and hyperboloids. The thermodynamics of these configurations is discussed to some extent. The results we find suggest that the entropy/area relation is always violated in the presence of a NUT charge. We argue also that the conjectured AdS/CFT correspondence may teach us something about the physics in spacetimes containing closed timelike curves. To this aim, we use the observation that the boundary metric of a (D+1)-dimensional Taub-NUT-AdS solution provides a D-dimensional generalization of the known Gödel-type spacetimes.