No Arabic abstract
We study $SO(d+1)$ invariant solutions of the classical vacuum Einstein equations in $p+d+3$ dimensions. In the limit $d to infty$ with $p$ held fixed we construct a class of solutions labelled by the shape of a membrane (the event horizon), together with a `velocity field that lives on this membrane. We demonstrate that our metrics can be corrected to nonsingular solutions at first sub-leading order in $frac{1}{d}$ if and only if the membrane shape and `velocity field obey equations of motion which we determine. These equations define a well posed initial value problem for the membrane shape and this `velocity and so completely determinethe dynamics of the black hole. They may be viewed as governing the non-linear dynamics of the light quasi normal modes of Emparan, Suzuki and Tanabe.
In the large D limit, and under certain circumstances, it has recently been demonstrated that black hole dynamics in asymptotically flat spacetime reduces to the dynamics of a non gravitational membrane propagating in flat D dimensional spacetime. We demonstrate that this correspondence extends to all orders in a 1/D expansion and outline a systematic method for deriving the corrected membrane equation in a power series expansion in 1/D. As an illustration of our method we determine the first subleading corrections to the membrane equations of motion. A qualitatively new effect at this order is that the divergence of the membrane velocity is nonzero and proportional to the square of the shear tensor reminiscent of the entropy current of hydrodynamics. As a test, we use our modified membrane equations to compute the corrections to frequencies of light quasinormal modes about the Schwarzschild black hole and find a perfect match with earlier computations performed directly in the gravitational bulk.
We find the equations of motion of membranes dual to the black holes in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (EGB) gravity to leading order in 1/D in the large D regime. We also find the metric solutions to the EGB equations to first subleading order in 1/D in terms of membrane variables. We propose a world volume stress tensor for the membrane whose conservation equations are equivalent to the leading order membrane equations. We also work out the light quasi-normal mode spectrum of static black holes in EGB gravity from the linearised fluctuations of static, round membranes. Also, the effective equations for stationary black holes and the spectrum of linearised spectrum about black string configurations has been obtained using the membrane equation for EGB gravity.All our results are worked out to linear order in the Gauss-Bonnet parameter.
The membrane paradigm posits that black hole microstates are dynamical degrees of freedom associated with a physical membrane vanishingly close to the black holes event horizon. The soft hair paradigm postulates that black holes can be equipped with zero-energy charges associated with residual diffeomorphisms that label near horizon degrees of freedom. In this essay we argue that the latter paradigm implies the former. More specifically, we exploit suitable near horizon boundary conditions that lead to an algebra of `soft hair charges containing infinite copies of the Heisenberg algebra, associated with area-preserving shear deformations of black hole horizons. We employ the near horizon soft hair and its Heisenberg algebra to provide a formulation of the membrane paradigm and show how it accounts for black hole entropy.
It has recently been demonstrated that black hole dynamics at large D is dual to the motion of a probe membrane propagating in the background of a spacetime that solves Einsteins equations. The equation of motion of this membrane is determined by the membrane stress tensor. In this paper we `improve the membrane stress tensor derived in earlier work to ensure that it defines consistent probe membrane dynamics even at finite $D$ while reducing to previous results at large D. Our improved stress tensor is the sum of a Brown York term and a fluid energy momentum tensor. The fluid has an unusual equation of state; its pressure is nontrivial but its energy density vanishes. We demonstrate that all stationary solutions of our membrane equations are produced by the extremisation of an action functional of the membrane shape. Our action is an offshell generalization of the membranes thermodynamical partition function. We demonstrate that the thermodynamics of static spherical membranes in flat space and global AdS space exactly reproduces the thermodynamics of the dual Schwarzschild black holes even at finite D. We study the long wavelength dynamics of membranes in AdS space, and demonstrate that the boundary `shadow of this membrane dynamics is boundary hydrodynamics with with a definite constitutive relation. We determine the explicit form of shadow dual boundary stress tensor upto second order in derivatives of the boundary temperature and velocity, and verify that this stress tensor agrees exactly with the fluid gravity stress tensor to first order in derivatives, but deviates from the later at second order and finite D.
We show that at the level of linear response the low frequency limit of a strongly coupled field theory at finite temperature is determined by the horizon geometry of its gravity dual, i.e. by the membrane paradigm fluid of classical black hole mechanics. Thus generic boundary theory transport coefficients can be expressed in terms of geometric quantities evaluated at the horizon. When applied to the stress tensor this gives a simple, general proof of the universality of the shear viscosity in terms of the universality of gravitational couplings, and when applied to a conserved current it gives a new general formula for the conductivity. Away from the low frequency limit the behavior of the boundary theory fluid is no longer fully captured by the horizon fluid even within the derivative expansion; instead we find a nontrivial evolution from the horizon to the boundary. We derive flow equations governing this evolution and apply them to the simple examples of charge and momentum diffusion.