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Tachyon Condensation and Black Strings

Gary T. Horowitz

TL;DR

This work shows that closed string tachyons on circles with antiperiodic fermions can trigger topology-changing transitions from black strings/branes to Kaluza-Klein bubbles of nothing when the wrapped circle attains the string scale outside the horizon, offering a dramatic endpoint to Hawking evaporation. The mechanism preserves charge and yields both static and expanding bubbles, with static solutions constrained by bounds on $Q/L^n$ and higher-dimensional generalizations to $p$-branes; near-horizon limits connect to AdS$_3\times S^3$ and AdS solitons. In asymptotically AdS spaces, tachyon condensation can drive decays to lower-energy bubble geometries, aligning with stability results and holographic expectations. The results broaden the landscape of possible resolutions to black hole evaporation and hint at a nonperturbative geometric transition mechanism beyond the correspondence point, with rich implications for AdS/CFT and flux-stabilized compactifications.

Abstract

We show that under certain conditions, closed string tachyon condensation produces a topology changing transition from black strings to Kaluza-Klein "bubbles of nothing." This can occur when the curvature at the horizon is much smaller than the string scale, so the black string is far from the correspondence point when it would make a transition to an excited fundamental string. This provides a dramatic new endpoint to Hawking evaporation. A similar transition occurs for black p-branes, and can be viewed as a nonextremal version of a geometric transition. Applications to AdS black holes and the AdS soliton are also discussed.

Tachyon Condensation and Black Strings

TL;DR

This work shows that closed string tachyons on circles with antiperiodic fermions can trigger topology-changing transitions from black strings/branes to Kaluza-Klein bubbles of nothing when the wrapped circle attains the string scale outside the horizon, offering a dramatic endpoint to Hawking evaporation. The mechanism preserves charge and yields both static and expanding bubbles, with static solutions constrained by bounds on and higher-dimensional generalizations to -branes; near-horizon limits connect to AdS and AdS solitons. In asymptotically AdS spaces, tachyon condensation can drive decays to lower-energy bubble geometries, aligning with stability results and holographic expectations. The results broaden the landscape of possible resolutions to black hole evaporation and hint at a nonperturbative geometric transition mechanism beyond the correspondence point, with rich implications for AdS/CFT and flux-stabilized compactifications.

Abstract

We show that under certain conditions, closed string tachyon condensation produces a topology changing transition from black strings to Kaluza-Klein "bubbles of nothing." This can occur when the curvature at the horizon is much smaller than the string scale, so the black string is far from the correspondence point when it would make a transition to an excited fundamental string. This provides a dramatic new endpoint to Hawking evaporation. A similar transition occurs for black p-branes, and can be viewed as a nonextremal version of a geometric transition. Applications to AdS black holes and the AdS soliton are also discussed.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 11 sections, 36 equations, 1 figure.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Black strings with F1 charge
  3. Two Charged Black Strings
  4. Static bubbles
  5. General bubble initial data
  6. $AdS_3 \times S^3$
  7. Further Applications
  8. Black $p$-branes
  9. Asymptotically AdS solutions
  10. Extremal black holes
  11. Discussion

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: The mass of charged bubbles as a function of their radius, assuming $Q<L^2$. The local minimum is at $\rho^2_0\approx Q/2$ and the local maximum is at $\rho_0 \approx L/2\pi$.