Singularity resolution and the black hole information paradox.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 128
ISBN-13: 9780494220153
Description: In the first part of this thesis, a string theory mechanism for the resolution of a class of naked, gravitationally-repulsive singularities is explored, particularly in the region where the system is not supersymmetric. This is the enhancon mechanism, which arises from purely string theoretic quantum corrections to the low-energy gravitational description. It is found that the physics of this system is particularly rich, involving no less than three appropriate phases for various values of the energy. A wide class of enhancon solutions is found and its description in several duality-equivalent frames is considered, settling a number of outstanding questions as to the correct physics, with implications for the dual field theory.Two pervasive problems in the physics of black holes are explored in this thesis. Particularly, the problematic existence of curvature singularities in generic solutions of classical gravity and the black hole information paradox are reviewed. The paradigm of string theory and, especially, its low-energy limit, supergravity, is used throughout as a tool for understanding these problems.Then, progress towards a microscopic understanding of the entropy of black holes is reported. A set of four-charge, four-dimensional geometries that is completely smooth, free of event horizons, has non-zero angular momentum and satisfies a supersymmetric mass-charge relation is found. The properties of this set, nicknamed fuzzballs, are amenable to an interpretation as microstates of an associated black hole, extending recent ideas as to the resolution of the information paradox. If such an interpretation is correct then it implies some unknown properties of the associated dual conformal field theory.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: B, page: 0368.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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