No Arabic abstract
We write down the most general membrane equations dual to black holes for a general class of gravity theories, up to sub-leading order in $1/D$ in large $D$ limit. We derive a minimal entropy current which satisfies a local form of second law from these membrane equations. We find that consistency with second law requires the membrane equations to satisfy certain constraints. We find additional constraints on the membrane equations from the existence of membrane solutions dual to stationary black holes. Finally we observe a tension between second law and matching with Wald entropy for dual stationary black hole configurations, for the minimal entropy current. We propose a simple modification of the membrane entropy current so that it satisfies second law and also the stationary membrane entropy matches the Wald entropy.
It has recently been demonstrated that the dynamics of black holes at large $D$ can be recast as a set of non gravitational membrane equations. These membrane equations admit a simple static solution with shape $S^{D-p-2} times R^{p,1}$. In this note we study the equations for small fluctuations about this solution in a limit in which amplitude and length scale of the fluctuations are simultaneously scaled to zero as $D$ is taken to infinity. We demonstrate that the resultant nonlinear equations, which capture the Gregory- Laflamme instability and its end point, exactly agree with the effective dynamical `black brane equations of Emparan Suzuki and Tanabe. Our results thus identify the `black brane equations as a special limit of the membrane equations and so unify these approaches to large $D$ black hole dynamics.
In this essay, we discuss the fine-tuning problems of the Higgs mass and the cosmological constant. We argue that these are indeed legitimate problems, as opposed to some other problems that are sometimes described using similar vocabulary. We then notice, following Tom Banks, that the problems become less compelling once we recognize that the Universe contains quantum gravity, and thus isnt fundamentally described by bulk QFT. Embracing this solution requires a reversal of the standard arrows UV->IR and past->future. The first reversal is familiar from AdS/CFT. The second reversal refers more specifically to our Universes cosmology, and is clearly in potential conflict with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the final part of the essay, we attempt to defuse this conflict, suggesting that the Second Law can arise naturally from de Sitter boundary conditions at future infinity.
A manifestly covariant equation is derived to describe the second order perturbations in topological defects and membranes on arbitrary curved background spacetimes. This, on one hand, generalizes work on macroscopic strings in Minkowski spacetime and introduces a framework for studing in a precise manner membranes behavior near the black hole horizon and on the other hand, introduces a more general framework for examining the stability of topological defects in curved spacetimes.
We investigate the generalized second law of thermodynamics (GSL) in generalized theories of gravity. We examine the total entropy evolution with time including the horizon entropy, the non-equilibrium entropy production, and the entropy of all matter, field and energy components. We derive a universal condition to protect the generalized second law and study its validity in different gravity theories. In Einstein gravity, (even in the phantom-dominated universe with a Schwarzschild black hole), Lovelock gravity, and braneworld gravity, we show that the condition to keep the GSL can always be satisfied. In $f(R)$ gravity and scalar-tensor gravity, the condition to protect the GSL can also hold because the gravity is always attractive and the effective Newton constant should be approximate constant satisfying the experimental bounds.
We derive a generalization of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that uses Bayesian updates to explicitly incorporate the effects of a measurement of a system at some point in its evolution. By allowing an experimenters knowledge to be updated by the measurement process, this formulation resolves a tension between the fact that the entropy of a statistical system can sometimes fluctuate downward and the information-theoretic idea that knowledge of a stochastically-evolving system degrades over time. The Bayesian Second Law can be written as $Delta H(rho_m, rho) + langle mathcal{Q}rangle_{F|m}geq 0$, where $Delta H(rho_m, rho)$ is the change in the cross entropy between the original phase-space probability distribution $rho$ and the measurement-updated distribution $rho_m$, and $langle mathcal{Q}rangle_{F|m}$ is the expectation value of a generalized heat flow out of the system. We also derive refin